George Russell’s New York Big Band

b. 23 June 1923, Cincinnati, Ohio, USA. Among contemporary jazz’s leading composers, Russell began being a drummer with Benny Carter, but initial found prominence within the middle-40s composing for Dizzy Gillespie, notably ‘Cubano End up being, Cubano Bop’. He also had written for Artie Shaw and Claude Thornhill and his ‘A Parrot In Igor’s Backyard’, combining components of Charlie ‘Parrot’ Parker and Stravinsky, was documented from the Friend De Franco big music group in 1949. Intervals of hospitalization for tuberculosis resulted in him developing his theoretical The Lydian Chromatic IDEA OF Tonal Organization, 1st released in 1953 and an essential influence around the later on modal jazz of Kilometers Davis and John Coltrane. Within the 50s Russell published ‘All About Rosie’ on the commission rate from Brandeis University or college and trained both privately with the institution of Jazz in Lenox, Massachusetts: his college students, then and later on, included Carla Bley, Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Don Ellis and Steve Swallow (the second option pair also documenting with him). In the first 60s he led a sextet and produced many celebrated recordings, frequently offering avant garde performers such as for example Sheila Jordan (‘You Are My Sunlight’), Eric Dolphy (Ezz-Thetics) and Don Cherry (At Beethoven Hall). Within the middle- to past due 60s, Russell was located in Sweden, where he attempted digital music and caused musicians such as for example Jan Garbarek, Terje Rypdal and Palle Mikkelborg. In 1969 he came back to the united states to instruct at the brand new England Conservatory, but nonetheless continuing to record in Sweden. (Lots of the recordings he manufactured in Scandinavia within the 60s and 70s possess since reappeared around the Spirit Note label within the 80s.) From your past due 70s Russell started playing and documenting regularly in america, often dealing with a big music group. He was among the 1st artists registered from the reactivated Blue Notice Information, and in the middle- to past due 80s he toured the united kingdom with rings that included many well-known English players, for instance, Chris Biscoe, Ian Carr, Andy Sheppard and Kenny Wheeler. Russell offers continued along with his theoretical function, completing another level of his Lydian Chromatic Idea in 1978. This stands among the central text messages of contemporary jazz theory. A complicated function, its basic idea is the fact that traditional jazz constructions, such as for example chord sequences, could be overlaid with scales or settings that expose a amount of pan-tonality therefore allow the participant more selections for improvising. He provides continued to execute along with his Living Period Orchestra as much as and beyond his 80th birthday.