Music:
Member Since: 2/8/2007
Band Website: doubledavemusic.com
Band Members: Giacomo Gates
His last release, Centerpiece on Origin Records, garnered rave reviews and was on Jazz Week's top 20 charts for more than three months.
Blessed with a full-bodied voice and rhythm, Gates didn't display his talents to the public until 1990 at the age of 40. Prior to that, his life read like a People Magazine story. Roaming from job to job and state to state, Gates accumluated many hard-knock-life experiences that eventually spurred on his artistic expression. "In this kind of music it's about intention, honesty and what comes through in your voice -- the experience of life," he says. Without question, Gates' story is one of challenging, changing and championing one's vision.
In the late '80's, Gates returned to his native Connecticut, devoted his full attention to music and honed a bebop approach similar to masters like Jon Hendricks and Eddie Jefferson. Like his mentors, Gates sometimes translates great instrumental solos into vocalese and pens lyrics to classic jazz compositions. Gates also is able to vocalize as an instrument – trombone, flute, bass and even drums. Invited onstage by Jon Hendricks during a 1995 performance, Gates sang drums to Hendricks' bass accompaniment of the pianist. After that, the instrument vocal became a regular part of his program.
Gates has performed in clubs and festivals all over the world and sung with such jazz greats as Mark Murphy, Kurt Elling, Jon Faddis and Lou Donaldson. His commitment to his music extends to education, and he teaches regularly at Wesleyan University, the Hartford Conservatory of Music and New Haven's Neighborhood Music School. He also has conducted workshops and residencies at numerous educational institutions all over the country. Like all seriously committed jazz artists, Giacomo Gates is a student of the music's great legacy and considers each performance to be a lesson in jazz history. Certainly for the jazz fan, it's also a compelling and enjoyable performance -- one full of Gates' joy, exuberance, wit and unlimited creativity.
Mark Murphy
Recipient of seven Grammy nominations for best jazz vocal performance, Mark Murphy is one of the world's best jazz vocalists performing today. During his prolific 40-year recording career, Murphy has released more than 60 albums, performed on the Tonight Show and in venues such as the Apollo Theater and acquired a fan base that ranges from vocal great Peggy Lee to composer Alec Wilder to legendary Ella Fitzgerald, who once declared "he is my equal."
It was Sammy Davis, Jr. who first discovered the young Mark Murphy in 1953 at a jam session in Murphy's hometown of Syracuse, New York. Impressed with Murphy's talent, Davis invited him to his show that night and ultimately was responsible for getting him on the Tonight Show with Steve Allen. It was Allen's composition, "This Could Be the Start of Something Big," that Murphy recorded a hit rendition of in 1959.
In the early '60s, Murphy hit the charts again with his single of "Fly Me To the Moon" and was voted "New Star of the Year" in Downbeat Magazine's Reader's Poll. He also spent several years in London, working clubs and building an audience throughout Europe. By the 70's, he was recording an average of an album a year with the Muse label, where he produced some of his finest work -- the Nat King Cole Songbook Vol. I and II, Bop for Kerouac I and II, Living Room, Satisfaction Guaranteed, Beauty and the Beast and his classic, Stolen Moments. Murphy's talent by the '80's was widely known and critically acclaimed, resulting in numerous Grammy nominations. In recent years, he has written, sung and rapped songs with some of the industry's finest and continues to tour internationally.
Quite clearly, Mark Murphy's jazz is timeless, and he transcends generations. As Liza Minelli once stated about his appeal, "There's a party goin' on in Mark's head, and I want to go to it!"
Sheila Jordan
Raised in poverty in Pennsylvania's coal-mining country, Sheila Jordan today is a world-class and critically acclaimed jazz vocalist with more than 22 recordings and several jazz awards, including the 2006 MAC Lifetime Achievement Award, to her credit.
Jordan began singing and playing piano as a child, and by her early teens, she was performing in Detroit night clubs. Influenced by instrumentalists like Charlie Parker, she encountered the negativity of racism as she preferred to work with black musicians. But Jordan perservered and joined the vocal trio, Skeeter, Mitch and Jean (she was Jean). After moving to New York in the early '50's, she married Parker's pianist, Duke Jordan, and studied with Lennie Tristano, finally making her first recordings under her own name in the early '60's. Jordan is probably is best known for her 10-minute version of "You Are My Sunshine," which is featured on The Outer View with George Russell.
Over the next 30 years, Jordan built an audience while singing in churches and clubs, and her popularity grew as more and more people discovered her creative and uncompromising style. She is a wonder to behold as she showcases her improvisation, superb scat singing and emotional interpretations of jazz ballads. In 1977, she recorded a memorable duet album with bassist Arild Andersen, Sheila, and in 1983, she teamed up with bassist Harvie Swartz to produce Old Time Feeling, which includes several of the standards Jordan regularly features in her live repertoire today.
Named "Talent Deserving Wider Recognition" by Downbeat Magazine's Critic Poll nine times, Jordan is finally gaining the attention and appreciation she deserves. She recently celebrated her seventy-fifth birthday by releasing Little Song on Highnote Records.
Influences: Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Eddie Jefferson, Jon Hendricks, King Pleasure
Sounds Like: Everyone has their own sound.
Record Label: doubledavemusic
Type of Label: Indie
