Harry Lookofsky

Violinist Harry Lookofsky bridged the techie rigors of classical music using the phrasing and rhythms of bebop to produce Stringsville, among the truly singular jazz recordings of it is era. He’s also recognized to modern audiences as the daddy of Michael Dark brown, the creative pressure behind the pioneering orchestral pop group the Remaining Banke. Born Oct 1, 1913 in Paducah, KY, Lookofsky start his violin research at age group eight, getting his formal trained in St. Louis — in his early teenagers he toured the vaudeville circuit as part of a little jazz orchestra, modeling his nascent strategy on pioneering violinist Joe Venuti. Lookofsky became a member of the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra in 1933, staying an associate of their rates for five years before relocating to NEW YORK to to remain with famed conductor Arturo Toscanini’s NBC Symphony Orchestra. Although traditional music continued spending his expenses, Lookofsky frequently came back to his jazz origins, emerging among the bebop era’s first & most achieved violinists — sometimes he even performed tenor violin, a musical instrument he cited because of its tonal commonalities towards the tenor saxophone. In 1954, when Toscanini retired, Lookofsky relocated to ABC, where he offered for a long time as concertmaster — by this time around, he was also a fixture on NEW YORK jazz sessions, documenting to get Coleman Hawkins, Sarah Vaughan, Ben Webster, and Donald Byrd. Supported by bassist Oscar Pettiford and drummer Charlie Swift, Lookofsky headlined the Epic program Wonder with Strings, the 1st documenting to feature his personal overdub aesthetic, a method that allowed him to try out multiple instruments simultaneously. These studio improvements reached their apex around the 1958 Atlantic day Stringsville: Documented in cooperation with arrangers Bob Brookmeyer and Hank Jones aswell as bassist Milt Hinton and drummer Elvin Jones, the recording captures a few of the most amazingly lyrical and imaginative bowing ever documented. But because Lookofsky’s overdubbed violin and viola solos are therefore carefully made up, in direct comparison towards the improvisational ethos therefore dominating in bebop theory, Stringsville was efficiently written from the recognized background of jazz, by no means generating the acclaim it richly deserves. Lookofsky continued to be an in-demand studio room player through the entire ’60s, support everyone from Tony Bennett to Wes Montgomery to Gil Evans. In 1966, he also created the classes that yielded the Remaining Banke’s pop traditional “LEAVE Renee,” negotiating the group’s agreement with Smash Information aswell. Lookofsky spent the fall of his profession focusing on tv jingles, but continued to be an active program contributor through the middle-’80s. He passed away of prostate tumor on June 8, 1998 at age 85.