2021

Back in 1954, Houston pianist Joe Sample teamed up with high school friends tenor saxophonist Wilton Felder and drummer Stix Hooper to form the Swingsters. Within a short time, they…

The technically brilliant trio opened with the evergreen “Hear A Rhapsody”, before the gutsy and sensitive Sumi Tonooka dug into the keys, presenting two spell-binding original compositions: the ballad-like “Shadow…

SUNRISE: October 15, 1931 SUNSET: June 17, 2020 Freddy Cole made his transition prior to the airing of his spotlight this month. The Spotlight on Jazz & Poetry team has…

“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…