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Home  SF Bay Area Kenny Burrell's 75th with Joey DeFrancesco, Hubert Laws, Gerald Wilson and more 7/27-31 at Yoshi's
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“I’m all in favor of getting grants for musicians. Or any other good brand of Scotch.” - Pepper Adams |
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Kenny Burrell's 75th with Joey DeFrancesco, Hubert Laws, Gerald Wilson and more 7/27-31 at Yoshi's |
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Written by Don Berryman
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Monday, 24 July 2006 |
"Burrell is the grand master of jazz
guitar." - Dizzy Gillespie
 Kenny Burrell © Ricky Richardson
Kenneth Earl Burrell was born on July 31, 1931 in Detroit, Michigan.
Burrell made his recording debut in 1951, with Dizzy Gillespie. After
moving from Detroit to New York City in 1956, he recorded with a wide
range of prominent musicians, including John Coltrane, Benny Goodman,
Gil Evans, Stan Getz, Billie Holiday, Milt Jackson, Quincy Jones, Oscar
Peterson, Sonny Rollins, Jimmy Smith, Stanley Turrentine, and Cedar
Walton. He also led his own groups since 1951. After a half a century
as a jazz professional, appearing on several hundred albums as leader
and sideman, Kenny Burrell is among the handful of guitar greats who
have forever changed the role of their instrument.
Aside from his performing and recording schedule, Kenny has been a
teacher at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) for many
years. Included in his teaching schedule is a special course that he
developed on the music and life of Duke Ellington called "Ellingtonia".
Started in 1978, it was the first regualr college course on Ellington
taught in the United States. In addition he is also the founder and
director of the Jazz Studies Program at UCLA where he is a professor of
music and ethnomusicology. He is also a lecturer and director of
workshops on guitar and Jazz studies, founder and President Emeritus,
of the Jzz Heritage Foundation, and all around crusader for the
recognition of jazz as a classical art form.
Kenny Burrell is also a prolific composer whose work is more and more
in demand. Kenny is composer of the 1998 Grammy Award winning song
"Dear Ella", performed by Dee Dee Bridgewater. His compositions have
been recorded by many other great artists such as Ray Brown, Jimmy
Smith, Grover Washington Jr., John Coltrane, June Christy, Frank Wes
and Stevie Ray Vaughn. More recently, he recieved a commission grant
from Meet the Composer, Inc. to write an original, extended composition
for the Boys Choir of Harlem which premiered at New York's Lincoln
Center, and in 1997 was recorded for Concord Records.
Born in Detroit, Kenny Burrell was raised in a musical family. Kenny,
who credits Charlie Christian, Oscar Moore, and Django Reinhardt as
influences, as well as such bluesmen as T-Bone Walker and Muddy Waters,
played on his first major recording session in Detroit in 1951 with a
Dizzy Gillespie combo that included John Coltrane, Milt Jackson, and
Percy Heath. Even though the young guitarist was keeping heavy company,
including that of such other up-and-coming Detroiters as Tommy
Flanagan, Yusef Lateef, Pepper Adams, and Elvin Jones, he remained in
Detroit to study at Wayne State University, from which he earned a B.A.
in music composition and theory in 1955. He also studied classical
guitar with Joseph Fava during that period and continues to employ
finger-style and other techniques.
A six-month tour in 1955 with the Oscar Peterson Trio helped to set
Burrell's sight on the Big Apple. The following year, he and Flanagan
drove to New York City and were promptly drafted into the major league
of jazz. Burrell not only became the city's most indemand Jazz
guitarist, recording with his own groups and with Coltrane, Billie
Holiday, Thad Jones, Kenny Dorham, Paul Chambers, Jimmy Smith, Gene
Ammons - and many others, but played on pop sessions with the likes of
Tony Bennett, James Brown and Lena Horn and worked in the pit bands of
such Broadway shows as Bye Bye Birdie and How to Succeed in Business
without Really Trying.
Kenny Burrell has been the recipient of many awards and has been voted
"Best Guitarist" numerous times by music fans and critics worldwide.
Recently he recieved this honor for the second time from the Jazz Times
International Readers Poll.
His music and recordings have recieved much international recognition
including the "Prix de Disc" from Switzerland. He has also received
many academic honors including a Doctorate of Human Letters, and the
1997 Ellington Fellowship awarded by Yale Universtiy. He was voted
"favorite Jazz Musician" by listeners of KLON Jazz Station in Los
Angeles in 1996 and was inducted into the KLON Jazz Hall of Fame. He
served on the awards panel for the National Endowment for the Arts and
was the National Chairperson for guitars for the National Association
of Jazz Educators. He has been dubbed America's "guitar laureate" by
the Detroit Free Press.
Hubert Laws is one of the few
classical artists who has also mastered jazz, pop, and rhythm-and-blues
genres; moving effortlessly from one repertory to another. He has
appeared as a soloist with the New York Philharmonic under Zubin Mehta,
with the orchestras of Los Angeles, Dallas, Chic |
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 Saturday, 22 November 2008
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