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“I play jazz because it’s the closest I can get to flying.…spreading joy, relating the human experience, and putting good into the world to counteract the negative. I want to…

Theodore Walter Rollins was born on September 7, 1930 in New York City. He grew up in Harlem not far from the Savoy Ballroom, the Apollo Theatre, and the doorstep…

Wallace Roney is from Philadelphia, PA, born May 25, 1960. He began his musical studies at the age of five, learning rhythmic dictation and sight-reading. He began playing the trumpet…

Composer-pianist-bandleader Omar Sosa was born in 1965 in Camagüey, Cuba’s largest inland city. At age eight, Omar began studying percussion and marimba at the music conservatory in Camagüey; in Havana,…

Ray Brown was born October 13, 1926 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and took piano lessons from the age of eight. After noticing how many pianists attended his high school, he thought…

Dave Brubeck was born in Concord, California, on December 6, 1920. He was the third son of Elizabeth Ivey Brubeck, a music teacher and pianist, and Howard "Pete" Brubeck, a…

Yuma Bellomee (pronounced like Bellamy), who goes by the name Yewmanyeti was born August 23, 1981 in Bronx, NY. He spent most of his childhood living in the south side…

Kamal Imani was born Terrence Karlton Oats on September 17th, 1966 in Harlem NY . At the age of 3 after his parents divorced his mother moved to the Bronx…

Lee Morgan was born July 10, 1938 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Lee was a jazz prodigy, first picking up the trumpet on about the age of thirteeen or so, after developing…

Yusef Komunyakaa was born on April 29, 1947 in Bogalusa, Louisiana. He is the eldest of five children. Komunyakaa uses his childhood experiences to inform many of his works: his…