Mike Melvoin with Charlie Haden & Bill Henderson
Biographie Mike Melvoin with Charlie Haden & Bill Henderson
Mike Melvoin - Piano
Mike Melvoin has been playing the piano since he was three and jazz since he was 13 and has never stopped. His legendary career in the studios as a player, arranger, composer, conductor, producer and recording artist continues at the highest level.
His credits, in all media and all styles, are the Who’s Who of music ranging from Frank Sinatra, Barbra Streisand, Peggy Lee, Tony Bennett, and Joe Williams to Quincy Jones, John Lennon, Tom Waits and the Beach Boys. In 2006 he was awarded the Musician's Musician award from the Friends Of Jazz at UCLA. Most recently, Michael received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the LA Jazz Society in 2010.
Bill Henderson - Vocals
”I was born to sing,” proclaims William “Bill” Randall Henderson, a Chicago native who came into the world on March 19, 1926-and that he has! Bill is a virtuoso performer whose heart is a vault filled with a wide range of music expressions waiting for the song of release. He has already put his personal stamp on many wonderful works of great composers and lyricists of popular music. Those who have heard him on record or in concert can attest to his marvelous genius.
Bill Henderson has spent many years cultivating and honing two distinctly separate yet complementary careers in music and film. His stage credits include film and television projects such as City Slickers, Maverick, Lethal Weapon 4, ER, Cold Case, Hill Street Blues, and The Twilight Zone. As much as he loves the camera, Bill is most at home with his musical profession-he was born to sing, it is his greatest gift! In 1959, his recording of Horace Silver's Senor Blues, announced his arrival as a jazz vocalist and since then he has worked with the greatest jazz masters such as Oscar Peterson, Cannonball Adderley, Miles Davis and many others. He has rightfully been compared to, and appreciated by, renowned singers such as Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, and Johnny Hartman and has several recordings to his credit.
In the last seven years, Bill Handerson has come full-circle returning, with great commitment, to the work he loves so dearly. His latest recording, released earlier this year, Bill Henderson: Live at Kennedy Center is receiving significant airplay on radio stations across America. He also recorded on Charlie Haden's exquisite 1999 CD, The Art of the Song, where he shares singing honors with another equally incomparable vocalist, the late Shirley Horn. Touring with Haden took him throughout U.S. and to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Additionally, he has performed at the John F. Kennedy Center for the past two years, at the Hotel Algonquin's famed Oak Room, and in the Rose Room at the Lincoln Center Jazz Program's new home both in NYC. There have also been the unusual and surprising occasions such as being feted by the Philadelphia Swing Dance Society who danced to choreography based on Bill's recordings.
Bill Henderson is such a master; the words, harmonies, and rhythms are his media. With him every note, every word, every phrase is a brush stroke. And every performance is a transporting masterpiece. (excerpts written by James) Zimmerman
Charlie Haden - Bass
As a member of saxophonist Ornette Coleman's early bands, bassist Charlie Haden became known as one of free jazz's founding fathers. Haden has never settled into any of jazz's many stylistic niches, however. Certainly he's played his share of dissonant music -- in the '60 and '70s, as a sideman with Coleman and Keith Jarrett, and as a leader of the Liberation Music Orchestra, for instance -- but for the most part, he seems drawn to consonance. Witness his trio with saxophonist Jan Garbarek and guitarist Egberto Gismonti, whose ECM album Silence epitomized a profoundly lyrical and harmonically simple aesthetic, or his duo with guitarist Pat Metheny, which has as much to do with American folk traditions as with jazz. There's a soulful reserve to Haden's art. Never does he play two notes when one (or none) will do. Not a flashy player along the lines of a Scott LaFaro (who also played with Coleman), Haden's facility may be limited, but his sound and intensity of expression are as deep as any jazz bassist's. Rather than concentrate on speed and agility, Haden subtly explores his instrument's timbral possibilities with a sure hand and sensitive ear.
Haden's childhood was musical. His family was a self-contained country & western act along the lines of the more famous Carter Family, with whom they were friends. They played revival meetings and county fairs in the Midwest and, in the late '30s, had their own radio show that was broadcast twice daily from a 50,000-watt station in Shenandoah, IA (Haden's birthplace). Haden debuted on the family program at the tender age of 22 months, after his mother noticed him humming along to her lullabies. The family moved to Springfield, MO, and began a show there. Haden sang with the family group until contracting polio at the age of 15. The disease weakened the nerves in his face and throat, thereby ending his singing career. In 1955, Haden played bass on a network television show produced in Springfield, hosted by the popular country singer Red Foley. Haden moved to Los Angeles and by 1957 had begun playing jazz with pianists Elmo Hope and Hampton Hawes and saxophonist Art Pepper.
Beginning in 1957, he began an extended engagement with pianist Paul Bley at the Hillcrest Club. It was around then that Haden heard Coleman play for the first time, when the saxophonist sat in with Gerry Mulligan's band in another L.A. nightclub. Coleman was quickly dismissed from the bandstand, but Haden was impressed. They met and developed a friendship and musical partnership, which led to Coleman and trumpeter Don Cherry joining Bley's Hillcrest group in 1958. In 1959, Haden moved with Coleman to New York; that year, Coleman's group with Haden, Cherry, and drummer Billy Higgins played a celebrated engagement at the Five Spot, and began recording a series of influential albums, including The Shape of Jazz to Come and Change of the Century. In addition to his work with Coleman, the '60s saw Haden play with pianist Denny Zeitlin, saxophonist Archie Shepp, and trombonist Roswell Rudd. He formed his own big band, the Liberation Music Orchestra, which championed leftist causes. The band made a celebrated eponymously titled album in 1969 for Impulse!
In 1976, Haden joined with fellow Coleman alumni Cherry, Dewey Redman, and Ed Blackwell to form Old and New Dreams. Also that year, he recorded a series of duets with Hawes, Coleman, Shepp, and Cherry, which was released as The Golden Number (A&M). In 1982, a re-formed Liberation Music Orchestra released The Ballad of the Fallen (ECM). Haden helped found a university-level jazz education program at CalArts in the '80s. He continued to perform, both as a leader and sideman. In the '90s, his primary performing unit became the bop-oriented Quartet West, with tenor saxophonist Ernie Watts, pianist Alan Broadbent, and drummer Larance Marable. He would also reconstitute the Liberation Music Orchestra for occasional gigs. In 2000, Haden reunited with Coleman for a performance at the Bell Atlantic Jazz Festival in New York City. Throughout the 2000s, Haden remained prolific, working with Gonzalo Rubalcaba on Nocturne and Egberto Gismonti on In Montreal in 2001; collaborating with Brad Mehldau, Michael Brecker and Brian Blade on the following year's American Dreams and John Taylor on 2004's Nightfall. That year, Haden returned to Montreal for the Joe Henderson tribute The Montreal Tapes with Henderson and Joe Foster and teamed up with Rubalcaba again for Land of the Sun. The Liberation Orchestra reunited for 2005's Not in Our Name, which was arranged and conducted by Carla Bley, and Haden celebrated his 70th birthday with Heartplay, a date with guitarist Antonio Forcione. Helium Tears, a 1988 session with Jerry Granelli, Robben Ford and Ralph Towner, was released in 2006. In 2008, Haden revisited his country roots with the Decca album Family and Friends: Rambling Boy. Late that year, the album's 'Is That America (Katrina 2005)' earned a Grammy nomination for Best Country Instrumental Performance. In 2009, Haden was showcased on pianist Laurence Hobgood's When the Heart Dances which also featured vocalist Kurt Elling. He returned in 2010 with Jasmine, a duo date with pianist Keith Jarrett recorded for a documentary film on his life. In 2011, Haden revisited his longtime noir project Quartet West with Sophisticated Ladies and appeared on the ECM date Live at Birdland (recorded in 2009) with saxophonist Lee Konitz, pianist Brad Mehldau and drummer Paul Motian.
