James Peter Giuffre (born in
Dallas, Texas,
April 26,
1921) is an
American jazz composer, arranger and
saxophone and
clarinet player.
Giuffre first became known as an
arranger for
Woody Herman's
big band, for which he wrote the celebrated "
Four Brothers" (1947). He would continue to write creative, unusual arrangements throughout his career.
He was a central figure in so-called
West coast jazz and was a member of
Shorty Rogers's groups before going solo.
Instrumental playing
Giuffre played clarinet, as well as tenor and baritone saxophones, but eventually focused on clarinet. His style is unique and distinctive, "having been self-formed, the only possible precedent having been the clarinet of
Lester Young."
[1] His early music was sometimes classified as
cool jazz. Giuffre's early saxophone work has been favorably compared to
Lester Young's, as well.
Trios
His first trio consisted of Giuffre,
guitarist Jim Hall and
double bassist Ralph Pena (later replaced by Jim Atlas). They had a minor hit in
1957 when Giuffre's "The Train and the River" was featured on the
television special
The Sound of Jazz. This trio explored what Giuffre dubbed "blues-based folk jazz". This same special matched Giuffre with fellow clarinetist
Pee Wee Russell for a leisurely jam session simply titled "Blues".
When Atlas left the trio, Giuffre replaced him with valve trombonist
Bob Brookmeyer. This unusual instrumentation was partly inspired by
Claude Debussy. The group can be seen performing in the film
Jazz on a Summer's Day filmed at the 1958
Newport Jazz Festival.
In
1961, Giuffre formed a new trio with
piano player
Paul Bley and
double bassist Steve Swallow. This group received little attention when they were active, but were later cited by some fans and musicians as among the most important groups in jazz history. They explored
free jazz not in the loud, aggressive mode of
Albert Ayler or
Archie Shepp, but with a hushed, quiet focus more resembling
chamber music. The trio's explorations of
melody,
harmony and
rhythm are still as striking and radical as any in jazz. Thom Jurek has written that this trio's recordings are "one of the most essential documents regarding the other side of early-'60s jazz."
[2]
Improvised music
Giuffre, Bley and Swallow eventually explored wholly improvised music, several years ahead of the
free improvisation boom in Europe. Jurek writes that
Free Fall, their final record, "was such radical music, no one, literally no one, was ready for it and the group disbanded shortly thereafter on a night when they made only 35 cents apiece for a set."
[3]
In the early 1970s, Giuffre formed a new trio with bassist Kiyoshi Tokunaga and drummer Randy Kaye. Giuffre added instruments including bass flute and soprano saxophone to his arsenal. A later group included Pete Levin playing synthesizer and replaced Tokunaga with electric bassist Bob Nieske. This group recorded three albums for the Italian
Soul Note label.
Teaching and performing
During the 1970s, Giuffre was hired by
New York University to head its jazz ensemble, and to teach private lessons in sax, and music composition.
Into the 1990s, Giuffre continued teaching and performing. He recorded with
Joe McPhee, and revived the trio with Bley and Swallow (though Swallow had switched to bass guitar, giving the group a different sound). Through the mid 1990s Giuffre taught at the
New England Conservatory of Music. He suffers from
Parkinson's Disease and no longer performs.
External links
| • • [ e] Jimmy Giuffre
|
| Albums:
Four Brothers •
Jimmy Giuffre •
Tangents in Jazz •
Tenors West •
The Jimmy Giuffre Clarinet •
Music for Brass •
The Music Man (album) •
Western Suite •
The Four Borthers Sound •
Ad Lib •
Seven Peices •
The Easy Way •
Piece for Clarinet and Strings •
Jimmy Giuffre Quartet in Person •
Music for People, Birds, Butterflies and Mosquitos •
Quiet Song •
River Chant •
IAI Festival •
Dragonfly •
Quasar •
•
Momentum, Willisau 1988 •
Liquid Dancer •
Fly Away Little Bird •
Concert Trio |
| As Jimmy Giuffre 3
|
| Albums:
Jimmy Giuffre 3 •
Trav'lin' Light •
Fusion •
Thesis •
Emphasis, Stuttgart 1961 •
Flight, Bremen 1961 •
Free Fall (Jimmy Giuffre album) •
•
•
Conversations With a Goose • |
City of Dallas
Flag
Seal
Nickname: Big D, D-Town, Triple D, The 2-1-4
Motto: Live Large. Think Big.
..... Click the link for more information.
April 26 is the 1st day of the year (2nd in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 0 days remaining.
It is the first day following the spring equinox which cannot be Easter Sunday in Western Christianity.
..... Click the link for more information.
19th century - 20th century - 21st century
1890s 1900s 1910s - 1920s - 1930s 1940s 1950s
1918 1919 1920 - 1921 - 1922 1923 1924
Year 1921 (MCMXXI
..... Click the link for more information.
Motto
"In God We Trust" (since 1956)
"E Pluribus Unum" ("From Many, One"; Latin, traditional)
Anthem
..... Click the link for more information.
Jazz is an original American musical art form that originated around the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in and around New Orleans.
Overview
Jazz has been called "America's only original art form.
..... Click the link for more information. The saxophone (colloquially referred to as sax) is a conical-bored instrument of the woodwind family.
It is usually made of brass and played with a single-reed mouthpiece like the clarinet.
..... Click the link for more information.
clarinet is a musical instrument in the woodwind family. The name derives from adding the suffix -et meaning little to the Italian word clarino meaning a particular type of trumpet, as the first clarinets had a strident tone similar to that of a trumpet.
..... Click the link for more information.
Orchestration is the study or practice of writing music for orchestra (or, more loosely, for any musical ensemble) or of adapting for orchestra music composed for another medium. It only gradually over the course of music history came to be regarded as a compositional art in itself.
..... Click the link for more information.
Woodrow Charles Herman (May 16 1913 – October 29 1987), better known as Woody Herman, was an American jazz clarinetist, alto and soprano saxophonist, singer, and big band leader.
..... Click the link for more information.
big band is a type of musical ensemble associated with playing jazz music and which became popular during the Swing Era from the early 1930s until the late 1940s, although there are many big-bands around nowadays.
..... Click the link for more information.
- For the film, see Four Brothers (film)
"
Four Brothers" (1947) is a jazz standard composed by Jimmy Giuffre and performed by the Woody Herman Orchestra.
..... Click the link for more information. West Coast jazz is a form of jazz music that developed around Los Angeles, California at about the same time as hard bop jazz was developing in New York City, in the 1950s and 1960s. West Coast jazz was generally seen as a sub-genre of cool jazz.
..... Click the link for more information.
Milton “Shorty” Rogers (April 14, 1924–November 7, 1994), born Milton Rajonsky in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, was one of the principal creators of West Coast jazz.
..... Click the link for more information.
Lester Willis Young (August 27, 1909 – March 15, 1959), nicknamed Prez, was an American jazz tenor saxophonist and clarinetist.
He is remembered as one of the finest, most influential players on his instrument, playing with a cool tone and sophisticated
..... Click the link for more information.
Cool jazz is a jazz style that emerged in the late 1940s in New York City.
History
During 1946, after the Second World War, there was an influx of Californian (predominantly white) jazz musicians to New York.
..... Click the link for more information. Lester Willis Young (August 27, 1909 – March 15, 1959), nicknamed Prez, was an American jazz tenor saxophonist and clarinetist.
He is remembered as one of the finest, most influential players on his instrument, playing with a cool tone and sophisticated
..... Click the link for more information.
The guitar is a musical instrument with ancient roots that is used in a wide variety of musical styles. It typically has six strings, but four, seven, eight, ten, and twelve string guitars also exist.
..... Click the link for more information.
James Stanley Hall (born December 4, 1930, Buffalo, New York) is an American jazz guitarist.
Career
Educated at the Cleveland Institute of Music, Hall moved to Los Angeles where he began to attract national, and then international, attention in the late 1950s.
..... Click the link for more information. double bass (also known as the contrabass, string bass, upright bass, bull fiddle, or simply bass) is the largest and lowest pitched bowed string instrument used in the modern symphony orchestra.
..... Click the link for more information.
19th century - 20th century - 21st century
1920s 1930s 1940s - 1950s - 1960s 1970s 1980s
1954 1955 1956 - 1957 - 1958 1959 1960
Year 1957 (MCMLVII
..... Click the link for more information.
Television (often abbreviated to TV, T.V., or more recently, tv; sometimes called telly, the tube, boob tube, or idiot box in British English) is a widely used telecommunication system for broadcasting and receiving moving pictures
..... Click the link for more information.
The Sound of Jazz was a landmark television program that was part of CBS's Seven Lively Arts series. The program aired December 81957 live from CBS Studio 54, a/k/a the Town Theater, located at 851 9th Avenue in New York City (now demolished).
..... Click the link for more information.
Charles Ellsworth Russell, much better known by his nickname Pee Wee Russell, (27 March, 1906 - 15 February, 1969) was a jazz musician. Early in his career he played clarinet and saxophones, but eventually focused solely on clarinet.
..... Click the link for more information.
Robert Brookmeyer (born December 19, 1929) is an American jazz valve trombonist, pianist, and arranger.
Born in Kansas City, Missouri, Brookmeyer first gained widespread public attention as a member of Gerry Mulligan's quartet from 1954 to 1957.
..... Click the link for more information.
Achille-Claude Debussy (IPA /aʃil klod dəby'si/) (August 22, 1862 – March 25, 1918) was a French composer.
..... Click the link for more information.
Jazz on a Summer's Day is a 1960 documentary film set at the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival in Rhode Island. It was filmed and directed by noted commercial and fashion photographer Bert Stern.
..... Click the link for more information.
The Newport Jazz Festival is a music festival held every August in Newport, Rhode Island, USA. It was established in 1954 by the jazz impresario George Wein. The Newport Jazz Festival moved to New York City in 1972 and became a two site festival in 1981 when it returned to Newport
..... Click the link for more information.
19th century - 20th century - 21st century
1930s 1940s 1950s - 1960s - 1970s 1980s 1990s
1958 1959 1960 - 1961 - 1962 1963 1964
Year 1961 (MCMLXI
..... Click the link for more information.
piano is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard. It produces sound by striking steel strings with felt hammers that immediately rebound allowing the string to continue vibrating at its resonance frequency.
..... Click the link for more information.
Paul Bley is a free jazz pianist born in Montreal, Canada in 1932 and long-time resident in the United States. His music characteristically features strong senses both of melodic voicing and space.
..... Click the link for more information.