TWINS JAZZ New Year’s Eve with The Great Larry Willis 2014 Party

NEW YEAR’S EVE WITH THE GREAT LARRY WILLIS

09:00 pm 31 Dec 2014

TWINS JAZZ
New Year’s Eve with The Great Larry Willis Quartet – 9pm (Doors Open at 7pm) PACKAGE INCLUDES LIVE JAZZ 9PM-1AM, 3-COURSE MENU, A BOTTLE OF BRAND …
Larry-Willis

via @twinsjazzclub

Pianist Larry Willis has had an important and distinguished 40-year career in jazz. Since making his recording debut on Jackie McLean’s landmark 1965 album “Right Now!,” the New York-born Willis has played everything from free jazz to fusion to rock while performing as a valued sideman with such jazz titans as Dizzy Gillespie, Lee Morgan, Cannonball Adderley, Art Blakey and Woody Shaw. Larry was born in 1942 in Manhattan’s Harlem. Surprisingly, he entered music not as a pianist but as a voice major, first at New York’s High School of Music and Art for gifted students, then at the Manhattan School of Music. His senior year in high school, at 17, he had his first recording date, a classical gig with the Music and Arts Choral Ensemble singing a Copland opera conducted by no less then Leonard Bernstein.

But something even more important than that happened to Larry at the beginning of that senior year. He started playing the piano no lessons, no teacher, just figuring it out by himself. By the end of the winter, he was playing his first professional gigs in a jazz trio with two of his classmates, Al Foster on drums and Eddie Gomez on bass. No one knew it then, but that little trio was probably the most distinguished high school jazz group in the country. Soon after entering the Manhattan School of Music, Larry switched from voice to music theory. For one, he was running head-on into the all-too-evident barriers facing black musicians in the classical world. On the positive side, Larry’s interest in jazz was turning into passion. A fellow student, Hugh Masakela, heard him jamming with Al Foster. Hugh was so impressed that he hooked Larry up with John Mehegan, the legendary New York jazz piano teacher. Those were Larry’s first-ever lessons. By the end of that year at the Manhattan School, at age 19, Larry was playing regularly with Jackie McLean, the great alto saxophone innovator.

This is a remarkable entry into jazz: a kid of 17 decides to play the piano for the first time; four months later, he’s playing gigs with a soon-to-be world class trio. A year and a half after that, he’s making jazz history with the next giant of the alto after Bird. A year after Larry’s graduation in 1965, Jackie gave him his first recording date “Right Now,” on Blue Note and on that first date recorded the first two pieces in a continuing stream of Willis compositions. Since then, Larry has played on more than 300 records. He’s played or recorded with almost every great jazz musician of the modern era, stars like Dizzy Gillespie, Lee Morgan, Woody Shaw, Hugh Masakela, Cannonball and Nat Adderley, Stan Getz, Art Blakey, Art Taylor, Clifford Jordan, Carmen McRae, and Shirley Horn. Recent CDs include a Larry Willis Quintet and four Larry Willis Trio recordings plus two solo sessions (labels are Audioquest, Steeplechase, Evidence and Mapleshade). Larry’s extraordinary versatility as a pianist ranges from rock and pop”he spent 7 years as keyboardist for Blood, Sweat and Tears to African, Brazilian and Afro-Cuban music. He’s one of the only non-Hispanic players who ever impressed Mario Bauza as a Latin pianist.

STATEMENT

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