Diaa Bekheet | Washington, DC – In 2007 I traveled to Paris, France. One of my main goals was to visit the ‘Place de la Concorde’ where there is a 3200-year-old ancient Egyptian obelisk which was placed there in the 19th century. From this marvelous location you can also gaze upon the Arc de Triomphe” and La Tour Eiffel.  Of course, it’s normal to hear French music everywhere, but that day, I heard a song that caught me off guard.

“I know this one indeed,” I said to myself. “Wow, that’s “Summertime” by Miles Davis, one of the most influential jazz musicians of the 20th Century. I asked a young lady if the American jazz legend was known in France. “Bien sure, (of course),” she responded enthusiastically. “J’aime beaucoup Miles Davis,” she smiled.

The French government awarded Miles Davis the Chevalier de la Legion d’Honneur in July 1991, for being a perpetual jazz innovator.

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The young French lady asked if Americans know any French singers. What a coincidence! The question came as we stood outside a shop that was playing “La Vie En Rose” by Edith Piaf. “ Of course! The dazzling and glamorous Edith Piaf,” I answered. “This year (2007) there’s a (biopic) movie named after her song,” I added. Piaf was a music and cultural force not only in France and Europe but also in the United States thanks to her huge hit song “La Vie En Rose.”

Last June, the U.S. postal service and its French counterpart released commemorative stamps honoring the two music legends: Miles Davis and Edith Piaf.

Commemorative stamps of music legends Miles Davis and Edith Piaf

“The U.S. Postal Service and La Poste, the French postal administration, are proud to honor Miles Davis and Edith Piaf on two stamps that cross borders, cultures and generations,” announced Roy Betts of the U.S. Postal Service. “The Postal Service learned about a significant exhibit in Paris focusing on Miles Davis this year and believed it was an appropriate time to honor an American music icon beloved in France and a legendary French singer who developed a huge following in the United States.”

Davis and Piaf appeared on the June issue of Forever stamps. They also appeared on the cover of the U.S. Postal magazine “Philatelic.” The stamps are now sold in the United States and in French postal services. The stamps commemorate the accomplishments and contributions of Davis and Piaf throughout our music history.

Davis and Piaf have left indelible marks on the music stage worldwide.

For more on jazz music, listen to VOA’s Jazz America

John Pizzarelli's latest album

Diaa Bekheet | Washington, DC – Jazz legend John Pizzarelli is getting ready to release his new album Double Exposure, a collection of great pop oldies rearranged and recast in a jazz style. Pizzarelli is one of the most versatile guitarists and singers on the jazz scene today. His latest album, which is proving the idea that jazz and pop can exist together, has taken everyone by surprise.

With a collection of 13 pop, rock and folk songs from a different generation, Double Exposure opens with Pizzarelli’s reversioned Beatles‘ upbeat song,” I feel Fine”. The soft spoken Pizzarelli and his band initially road tested songs during a performance last year at the renowned Birdland jazz club in New York City.  Pizzaelli and his band played Lee Morgan’s “Sidewinder” incorporating the Beatles’ “I Feel Fine” inside.  The mix was well-received and drew applause.

Pizzarelli  also rearranged other oldies on Double Exposure, including Neil Young’s “Harvest Moon,” James Taylor’s “Traffic Jam,” the Allman Brothers classic “In Memory Of Elizabeth Reed,”  Joni Mitchell’s “Free Man In Paris,” Tom Waits’ “Drunk On The Moon,” Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller’s “Ruby Baby,” and songs by Billy Joel and Donald Fagen of Steely Dan.

The album ends with a subtle remake of Seals and Crofts’ 1973 soft rock hit “Diamond Girl,” which quotes directly from Miles Davis’ 1950’s iconic “So What.”

“It’s funny – when we first did ‘Diamond Girl’ and a lot of the horn songs we actually got to play live at Birdland about a year ago just to see if this idea was anything,” said Pizzarelli in an interview with VOA’s Jazz Beat. “We actually played ‘So What’ and then sang ‘Diamond Girl’.”  Pizzarelli said people liked the new style very much.

Listen to John Pizzarelli and selected songs from Double Exposure:

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John Pizzarelli was born in New Jersey in April 1960. He grew up in a house crowded with guitars, and everybody in his family played an instrument at one time or another. His father is the iconic guitarist Bucky Pizzarelli.

“There were guitars in the house all the time. I once joked that if you wanted to sit down on the couch, you had to move a guitar you know,” said Pizzarelli who is known for his charming stage presence. “And eventually you say I’m moving this guitar very much I’ve got to try and play it. It was just something that we did and I didn’t even realize that I was making a living doing it.”

In his 20s, John Pizzarelli used to go out on jazz, pop and rock gigs, having a good time and getting a check. “It was just something that we enjoyed. I was making a living doing it. So, It’s very interesting how this sort of evolved,” he said.

Guitarist and composer John Pizzarelli

Besides his father and sister, Pizzarelli was highly influenced by the legendary vocalist and pianist Nat King Cole, trumpeter Miles Davis, singer Frank Sinatra, pianist Duke Ellington, The Beatles, saxophonist Stan Getz and songwriter-arranger-guitarist-pianist Antonio Carlos Jobim.

With more than 40 albums under his belt, Pizzarelli is a prolific guitarist who has worked in a vast range of studio settings with many famous musicians – most recently in February – with Beatles legend Paul McCartney for an iTunes concert at Capital Records Studios in Hollywood, California.

“I made the record “Kisses on the Bottom” with him and Diana Krall was the piano player… and I got to play with him on the Grammy,” Pizzarelli said. “He [Paul McCartney] is just as humble and as lovely a musician as you could find, and a really talented musician.”

In 1998, Pizzarelli released his studio album, John Pizzarelli Meets the Beatles, as a tribute to the Fab Four (The Beatles). The idea for one of the most talked-about albums was to recast and re-imagine some of the great oldies in a jazz setting. So he placed the songs into a different time as if someone else had performed them first. For instance, he rearranged “Here Comes The Sun” in a Brazilian Bossa Nova style – it was meant as a Jobim/Getz tribute.

Pizzarelli, who is also a radio host and a television personality, has just returned to the United States from a European tour where he performed and promoted Double Exposure. The album is slated for release in May.

For more on jazz music, listen to VOA’s Jazz America

A Tibute to Miles, a Grammy winner

Diaa Bekheet | Washington, DC – In March 1994, American jazz drummer extraordinaire Tony Williams released a special album as a tribute to the man who discovered him, jazz legend Miles Davis. The album, A Tribute To Miles, is a collection of compositions celebrating the life and music of the iconic trumpeter and bandleader, Davis, who died in September 1991 and  is widely considered one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century.

A Tribute To Miles brought together a group of jazz icons, including pianist Herbie Hancock, saxophonist Wayne Shorter, bassist Ron Carter, hard bop,  post-bop trumpeter Wallace Roney and Tony Williams who was famous for his use of polyrhythms and metric modulation. The sublime-sounding album won a Grammy award for Best Jazz Instrumental Performance – Individual or Group. It’s a bit surprising that Wallace Roney sounded almost exactly like Miles Davis, with saxophonist Wayne Shorter balancing the trumpet. Tony Williams, Herbie Hancock, and Ron Carter completed the impressive performance with great virtuosity and strength. The album is a tour de force.

Williams, who was considered the greatest jazz drummer of his era, died in California from a heart attack on February 23, 1997 at age 51. On the first anniversary of his death, I prepared a special Jazz Club USA show (for a Middle East audience) focusing on his album, Wilderness, which he released in 1996 in support of a clean and safe world environment. Also I talked about his album Young At Heart, which was released after his death. You will hear the title cut in full following my Arabic narration.

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Wilderness prompted some people to ask about Tony Williams’ China connection because of three songs – composed by him titled “China Town”, “China Road”, and “China Moon”. In a rare,  historic interview with BET television in 1996, Williams explained that: “The China connection is that about seven years ago I found out that my great, great grandfather was Portuguese … he lived in the Portuguese part of China, Macau, … so, I’m Portuguese and Chinese [on my mother’s side], and on my father’s side I’m African American. So, I’m African-Euro-Asian.”

Williams was born on December 12, 1945 in Chicago, Illinois. His father, Tillmon Williams, played saxophone and took him to music clubs to encourage his music interests. When Williams was eight years old, he began on drums, taking lessons from jazz drummer Alan Dawson. At the age 13, Williams began performing in concerts with the acclaimed clarinetist, saxophonist and bandleader Sam Rivers in Boston. At 17, Williams’ inventive playing highly impressed Miles Davis and attracted his attention. Davis hired him, and soon his quintet’s sound changed. Later, Davis described him as “the center of the group’s sound” in his biography.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7NLNaGMyTjI

In 1964, Williams released his debut album, Life Time. Five years later, he formed his own R&B-jazz-rock fusion trio, The Tony Williams Lifetime, with John McLaughlin on electric guitar and Larry Young (aka Khalid Yasin Abdul Aziz) on organ and piano. The trio was very successful but short-lived. Its debut album, Emergency, is still considered a fusion classic. The group was disbanded in 1975, and innovative Williams formed another one: the New Tony Williams Lifetime.

In addition to his performances with Miles Davis, Williams recorded and performed with other jazz legends, including drummer Art Blakey, guitarist and singer-songwriter Jimi Hendrix, saxophonist and composer John Coltrane, drummer Max Roach, and ex-Beatle Paul McCartney.

For more on jazz music, listen to VOA’s Jazz America

An undated photo during a concert of American jazz tenor saxophonist Lester Young (1909-1959).

Diaa Bekheet | Washington, DC – Lester Young was one of the most influential saxophonists of the swing era, introducing a unique approach to improvisation that provided much of the basis for modern jazz solo conception. He was known for his famous smooth tone and relaxed lyrical style. Many saxophonists have copied his style, and many others – including Dexter Gordon – were primarily influenced by him.

Young was born in Mississippi in 1909. He played saxophone, violin, trumpet, and drums. He spent a great deal of his boyhood touring with his family’s band in both the vaudeville and carnival circuits. When he was 18 years old, he left the band, refusing to tour with it in the Southern United States, where Jim Crow laws were in effect and racial segregation was required in public facilities. In 1927, Young started touring with regional dance bands, including Walter Page’s Blue Devils that formed the core of what became the Count Basie Orchestra. His style and sophisticated harmonies with Count Basie’s Orchestra gained him popularity and prominence.

He played with other jazz legends, including Nat King Cole, Buddy Rich, Oscar Peterson, Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis, Charlie Parker and Billie Holiday who gave him the nickname, Prez.

I profiled Young in the early 1990s as part of my Jazz Club USA series on legendary Americans. I also talked about Benny Goodman and Oscar Peterson.

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Young, who held his saxophone out to the side when others held it upright, had an exceptional personality. Some considered him eccentric, but his eccentricity earned him recognition as the original hipster. His signature clothing style, including a “porkpie hat”, was part of his legend. This particular hat style inspired jazz bassist and bandleader Charles Mingus to write his elegiac tune “Goodbye Porkpie Hat”. The composition was later renamed “Theme for Lester Young” after Young died in New York on March 15, 1959. He was 49.

Young was one of icons included in A Great Day in Harlem, a rare Oscar-nominated documentary film on the history of jazz.  For me, the title, A Great Day in Harlem, always brings a flashback of a 1958 historic photo showing dozens of legendary Jazz musicians who gathered around a brownstone between Madison and Fifth avenues in New York City for a group picture by Esquire magazine photographer Art Kane. He rightly calls it “the greatest picture of that era of musicians ever taken.” The magazine published the photo in its January 1959 issue.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jf-cTg9a3_c#t=56m43s

For more on jazz music, listen to VOA’s Jazz America

Diaa Bekheet | Washington, DC – Hard bop trumpeter and composer Tim Hagans is one of the most influential voices in modern jazz today. His latest album The Moon Is Waiting is a set of original recordings reflecting his creative ability to manipulate his trumpet and make tightly-structured music, allowing for the “wildest playing possible”.

“I’m not comfortable making comfortable music,” said Hagans about releasing The Moon Is Waiting last October. “This is the ideal band for me to create a kind of spontaneous combustion of raw energy that is nonetheless melodically unified. This might sound like a contradiction, but all my music is tightly structured to allow for the wildest playing possible.”

Tim Hagans was born in August 1954. He grew up in Dayton, Ohio playing in school bands. His early inspirations included Miles Davis, Brown Clifford, Herb Alpert, Sly Stone, and Blood, Sweat and Tears. In 1974, he majored in music education at Bowling Green State University, but dropped out of school to join Stan Kenton’s band. He later moved to Europe, where he lived in Malmö, Sweden, the so-called hotbed of the European jazz scene.

When he returned to the United States, Hagans taught music at the University of Cincinnati and the Berklee College of Music in Boston, Massachusetts. In April, he will travel to Sweden for a recording Project.

Last year, Hagans’ song, Box of Cannoli, was nominated for a Grammy award in the Best Instrumental Composition category. The song is from his album The Avatar Sessions – The Music Of Tim Hagans, the final project which encapsulates his 15 years with the Nörrbötten Big Band before resigning as Artistic Director in 2011.

Tim Hagans' Animation Imagination

Hagans’ first Grammy-nominated album, Animation Imagination, was a smash in 1999. You will feel the heavy influence trumpet great Miles Davis had on him when you listen to this album. I introduced the title cut, “Animation Imagination”, on my Jazz Club USA show for the Middle East 13 years ago. Also on the show is tenor saxophonist Eric Alexander who released an album the same year, and a reimagined “Delilah” by Ellis and Branford Marsalis.  Their music follows Arabic narration.

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Tim Hagans is well known on the modern jazz scene as a great improviser who maintains integrity of original character and tone.  But he is highly inspired by the music of Miles Davis.

“The first Miles Davis recording that I heard is still one of my favorite jazz records…In Person Friday and Saturday Nights live at the Blackhawk,” explains Hagans in his online biography. “The band was swinging and popping and the recording has a real dark sound that makes the music especially intriguing. Then I heard Bitches Brew and life changed once again. Although I love everything that Miles played, the records from In A Silent Way to Agharta are my favorites. Those records reflect the social and political energies of that time. It wasn’t just music, it was an abstract description of extreme force and energy.”

While in Europe, Hagans performed and recorded with many jazz icons, including jazz tenor saxophonist, composer, bandleader and Oscar-nominated actor Dexter Gordon. This year, Hagans will be awarded an honorary doctorate of music from the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki, where he was an International master class visitor.

Tim Hagans

• Born on August 19, 1954 in Dayton, Ohio.
• Studied music at Bowling Green State University.
• Quit school and joined Stan Kenton’s band the band (1974-1977).
• Joined Woody Herman Orchestra in 1977 only for four weeks.
• Taught at the College-Conservatory of Music at the University of Cincinnati (1982-84).
• Taught at the Berklee College of Music (1984-87).
• Artistic director of the Nörrbötten Big Band (1996-2011).

Tim’s Albums

• From the Neck Down (1983)
• No Words (1993)
• Audible Architecture (1994)
• Hub Songs, the Music of Freddie Hubbard (1997)
• Animation – Imagination (1999)
• Re-Animation: Live in Montreal (1999)
• Beautiful Lily (2006)
• Alone Together (2008)
• The Avatar Sessions (2010)
• The Moon is Waiting (2011)

For more on jazz music, listen to VOA’s Jazz America

Ahmad Jamal's Blue Moon

Diaa Bekheet | Washington, DC – Innovative and influential American jazz pianist Ahmad Jamal is performing this coming week at the Theatre du Chatelet in Paris, France as part of a world tour that will also take him later to Martinique, Rome, Italy and Istanbul, Turkey.  Jamal will play songs from his new album Blue Moon. The CD, described by jazz critics as his latest masterpiece, contains nine songs.

Jamal is best-known for his distinctive piano improvisations. He still plays music with the same energy, elegance and sophistication at the age of 82. The talented pianist has been labeled as the chief apostle of American classical music. Jamal has been touring the world for concerts and performances for more than five decades. He started his concert tour by visiting Egypt, Sudan and Ghana in the late 1950s.

I first profiled fabulous Jamal in 1994 when the National Endowment of the Arts officially recognized his genius and named him a Jazz Master. I also highlighted many of his performances at festivals in the 1990s, including his noteworthy appearance at the 1998 Poznan Jazz Fair in Poznan, Poland with his quartet. The group included bassist James Cammack, drummer Idris Muhammed and Othello Molineaux on the Steel Drums.

Born in July 1930 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Jamal strongly believes that “music soothes the savage beast.” He began playing piano at age thee. He always had one straight answer to the question asked by so many music critics on how he got into the music business. “I didn’t choose music. Music chose me,” stresses the iconic bandleader, composer and educator who once played with jazz legend Dizzy Gillespie.

Ahmad Jamal has inspired and influenced many musicians. Trumpet legend Dizzy Gillespie loved him. So did Cool Jazz founder Miles Davis who reportedly said, “All my inspiration comes from Ahmad Jamal.”

Just listen to his latest album Blue Moon and you will find that he is still as compelling as ever. One of my all-time favorites is his gorgeous and signature track “Poinciana” from his classic 1958 album At the Pershing: But Not for Me. It remained on the Best-selling charts for more than two years — unprecedented for a jazz album in the 1950s.

This particular composition was recorded at the Pershing Hotel’s nightclub in Chicago while he was on tour. Later, due to its sweeping popularity, Jamal made it the title of a whole new album that was released in 1963. “Poinciana“ was a great hit – although not written by Jamal.  He later turned it into his signature tune. In fact, my favorite Hollywood star Clint Eastwood featured it in his 1995 movie The Bridges of Madison County.

Ahmad Jamal's After Fajr

One of Jamal’s well-known albums in the Arab world is After Fajr, which he originally recorded live in mid-2004 with his trio in France but released in 2005. Fajr, Arabic for dawn prayer, is the first of the five daily prayers offered by practicing Muslims.  Another favored album is Ahmad Jamal: Live in Baalbeck (Lebanon 2003).

A subtle jazz piano virtuoso, Jamal was named Officier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French government in 2007. He is featured as a celebrated jazz master on several jazz history books, including Considering Genius: Writings on Jazz by Stanley Crouch (2007), and Miles Davis and American culture by Gerald Lyn Early (2001).

For more on jazz music, listen to VOA’s Jazz America

Book cover

Diaa Bekheet | Washington, DC – If you surf the Internet for articles about jazz and photography, you might find a few. But a recently-released book compiles accounts and rare expressive photos of jazz greats Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Miles Davis, Sonny Rollins, Billie Holiday and others.

Blue Notes in Black and White: Photography and Jazz, by Benjamin Cawthra, charts the development of jazz photography from the swing era of the 1930s to the rise of Black Nationalism and the civil rights movement in the 1960s. It also introduces the readers to some great jazz photographers, including Herb Snitzer, Francis Wolff, Roy DeCarava, William Claxton, Gjon Mili, William Gottlieb, Herman Leonard and others.

I talked with the author, Benjamin Cawthra, who is Associate Professor of History at California State University, Fullerton, and Associate Director at the Center for Oral and Public History. He told me he worked on the book for more than 10 years to offer an account of the partnership between two of the 20th century’s innovative art forms: photography and jazz.

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It all started when Cawthra was working at a museum at St. Louis, Missouri and had the brainstorm of doing an exhibition on jazz great Miles Davis, a native son of St. Louis area.

“It seemed that he’d never taken a bad picture, and so many photographers had taken his pictures,” noted Cawthra who was struck by some extraordinary images that were part of the exhibition.  “So, when I went to do my dissertation at Washington University at St. Louis I was just thinking: where did these really great photographs come from? Why would they taken? What impact, if any, did they have at the time they were taken? And how they become such classic, iconic images and photographs of jazz musicians?”

Blue Notes in Black and White: Photography and Jazz recounts more racism stories related to jazz greats, including Davis. Miles Davis was performing at a club in New York. He was taking a break to escort a “pretty white girl named Judy” to a Taxicab between sets. A white police officer told him to move along — to keep the sidewalk clear. Davis, who was famous at the time, explained to the situation to the officer, but it tuned into a scuffle.

“A second detective comes along and starts beating him on the head with a baton,” explained Cawthra. “So, the next image we see of Miles Davis is him with a blood-spattered jacket, a bloody scalp and being booked at police headquarters. And again here’s a moment where the social tension and the difficulty of race in America are impinging on the jazz image.”

Blue Notes in Black and White: Photography and Jazz also shows the links between diverse photographers, examining their common interest in jazz as a subject. In addition, the book sheds light on their “substantial differences” in terms of approach as jazz itself underwent stylistic changes and cultural repositioning against the backdrop of the modern civil rights movement.

Ben Cawthra - Courtesy Don Peterson

Cawthra opens his book by looking at a powerful moment in 1960 when African-American jazz icon Louis Armstrong actually lets his guard down for a photographer named Herb Snitzer who was working for the jazz magazine Metronome. Armstrong was on a tour in the Northeastern United States with his All-Stars band. He was probably the most famous entertainer in America — maybe in the world — not named Charlie Chaplin in the 1920s and the 1930s, Cawthra explained.

“And yet as [photographer Ralph] Ellison suggests in his novel [Invisible man,] which was published in 1952, during that year Louis Armstrong – the real Louis Armstrong – was not really visible, he’s invisible because he has to play a role,’ the book author elaborated. He has to smile, he has to play a particular role that’s expected of him from his audience, especially his white audience and that just the way it was,” the author said.

“He was on tour with Armstrong in Connecticut. He took some extraordinary photographs of Louis Armstrong in which he’s not smiling, he’s not the gregarious entertainer that we think of, and he came to find out later that Armstrong had been denied the use of restroom facilities on the tour,” said Cawthra. “That was really affecting his mood, and that’s perhaps why he has this look on his face.”

In Blue Notes in Black and White: Photography and Jazz, Cawthra writes: “Surely Armstrong was acutely aware of his own invisibility – his second-class status as a man – during those early years. After all in ‘Black and Blue’ he sings ‘I’m White Inside,’ which Ellison may have read not as a sellout but as the strongest assertion of equality a black singer could have made in the early 1930s.”

The book has some of the most extraordinary and famous photos, which didn’t receive much play in the press between the 1940s and 1960s, nor in some of the leading jazz magazines of the time. Among them are photos of Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington,  Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker and Billie Holiday, which in 1996 became a U.S. postage stamp.

Profile songs by Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington on my Jazz Club USA & Down Memory Lane in 1999, follow Arabic introduction.

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For more on jazz music, listen to VOA’s Jazz America

Guitar Man by George Benson

Diaa Bekheet | Washington, DC – Contemporary jazz guitarist and vocalist George Benson has released a new album titled Guitar Man. It’s a collection of great music showcasing his unparalleled guitar playing. Primarily arranged by musical director and pianist David Garfield, Guitar Man includes the funky “Tequila” featuring piano work by Joe Sample and percussion by Lenny Castro.

The album has 11 other re-imagined smooth jazz and pop songs by great musicians, such as ”Naima“  by saxophone great John Coltrane, “I Want To Hold Your Hand” by the Beatles, “My Cherie Amour” by Stevie Wonder, Latin-tinged “Fingerlero” by Ronnie Foster and “Don’t Know Why” by Norah Jones.

The accomplished Benson skyrocketed to fame, using vocal techniques. Considered one of the most successful jazz guitarists, he started his first group in New York in 1965, and achieved more success than any of his ‘comrades’ at the time. In 1967, Benson was invited by jazz legend Miles Davis to play with him before the jazz fusion explosion. They recorded the great hit album, Miles In The Sky. Since then, Benson has become one of America’s most successful and accomplished guitarists.

He recorded the monster hit album Breezin’ in 1976, which has sold more than 10 million copies. Benson never limited himself to jazz music, but expanded to include pop and R&B throughout his 50-year career, during which he recorded more than 35 albums and won 10 Grammy Awards.

Benson has developed a style that appeals to a broad mainstream audience. My colleague Russ Davis recently talked with Benson about his new album Guitar Man, two other new releases and his audience. Benson explained why he thinks a lot of people thought of him more as a vocalist than an instrumentalist.

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Guitar Man was recorded with the collaboration of a solid team of jazz icons, including Joe Sample, keyboardist and musical director David Garfield, bassist Ben Williams and drummer Harvey Mason.

I profiled George Benson twice in the mid 1990s on my Jazz Club USA show. He told me then that he believes it’s the audience that gives a musician an identity and a stature in the world. Benson’s music follows my Arabic narration.  You will also enjoy songs by Benny Goodman and Duke Ellington in the “Down Memory Lane” segment of the show.

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Brilliant improviser and vibrant entertainer George Benson says continuous practice is the key to mastering an instrument. Once in control, it’s easy to communicate with any other musician in any country, he advises. Benson has collaborated with many other acclaimed vocalists, including Pavarotti, Diana Krall and Erykah Badu.

For more on jazz music, listen to VOA’s Jazz America

Ron Carter's Great Big Band

Diaa Bekheet | Washington, DC – American jazz bassist Ron Carter is a smart, elegant, and funky composer, who has been playing bass since 1955.  In fact, Carter is considered one of the most influential bassists in the history of American jazz. Critics say he’s the world’s most prolific jazz bassist with more than 2,000 recordings under his belt. Carter’s most recent album, The Great Big Band, was recorded in June last year.

Carter started playing Cello when he was 10. At the age of 17, he switched to bass. Carter says he originally wanted to be a classical musician, but got attracted to jazz when he found himself surrounded by so many jazz legends in the 1950s. He first rose to national prominence in 1963 after appearing on the album Seven Steps to Heaven with jazz icon Miles Davis and his second great quintet, which also included jazz greats Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter and Tony Williams. Carter also performed with a range of great musicians from Antonio Carlos Jobim, Chet Baker, Coleman Hawkins, to, Eric Dolphy, Aretha Franklin, and A Tribe Called Quest.

I profiled Ron Carter on my Jazz Club USA in Arabic In 1993. He had just won a Grammy for Best Jazz Instrumental Group, for his “Miles Davis Tribute”. Carter’s long and versatile career includes teaching and lecturing. Although he recently retired as a Distinguished Professor and head of the Jazz Program at the City College of New York, he’s still on the board of directors of the Harlem Jazz Music Center.

Here’s a recent interview with the great bassist Ron Carter done by Russ Davis on VOA’s Jazz America:

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The great jazz bassist, who received two honorary doctorates and France’s premier cultural award, appears in two films about jazz music: Ron Carter & Art Farmer: Live at Sweet Basil, filmed in Sweet Basil, New York in 1990 with Art Farmer, Cedar Walton and Billy Higgins. And second is Herbie Hancock Trio: Hurricane!, a live concert of spectacular compositions and improvisations featuring an elegant and magnificent interplay between Hancock on piano, Ron Carter on bass, and Billy Cobham on the drums in 1991.

Ron Carter, who just wrapped up a trip to Brazil, is now on a European tour that will take him to Hungary, France, Germany, and Poland. The jazz innovator will also perform in Japan in December.

For more on jazz music, listen to VOA’s Jazz America