- Bill Evans
Bill Evans (born February 9, 1958 in Clarendon Hills, Illinois) is an American jazz saxophonist. He plays primarily tenor and soprano saxophones. Evans attended North Texas State University and William Paterson University, where he studied with Dave Liebman, a Miles Davis alumnus. In the early to mid-1980s, Evans played with Davis and was instrumental in his musical comeback. Evans is not related to jazz pianist Bill Evans, who played with Davis in the 1950s. - Ornette Coleman
Ornette Coleman (born March 9, 1930) is an American saxophonist and composer. He was one of the major innovators of the free jazz movement of the 1950s and 1960s. Coleman was born and raised in Fort Worth, Texas, where he began performing R&B and bebop initially on tenor saxophone. He later switched to alto, which has remained his primary instrument. Coleman's timbre is easily recognized: his keening, crying sound draws heavily on blues music. - McCoy Tyner
Alfred McCoy Tyner (born December 11 1938) is a jazz pianist from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, best known for his work with the John Coltrane Quartet. Tyner was born in Philadelphia as the oldest of three children. He was encouraged to study piano by his mother. He finally began studying the piano at age 13 and within two years, music had become the focal point in his life. Among many other things, his playing can be distinguished by a low bass left hand, … - Anthony Braxton
Anthony Braxton (born June 4, 1945 in Chicago) is an American composer, saxophonist, clarinettist, flautist, and pianist. He has created a large body of highly complex work. While not known by the general public, Braxton is one of the most prolific American musicians/composers to date, having released well over 100 albums of his works since the 1960s. Among the vast array of instruments he utilizes are the flute; the sopranino, soprano, C-Melody, F alto, E-flat alto, … - Van Morrison
Van Morrison was born in Belfast in 1945, the son of a shipyard worker who collected American blues and jazz records. Van grew up listening to the music of Muddy Waters, Mahalia Jackson , Lightnin' Hopkins and John Lee Hooker . As a teenager he played guitar, sax and harmonica with a series of local Irish showbands, skiffle and rock'n'roll groups before forming an r&b band called Them in 1964. - Eric Dolphy
Eric Allan Dolphy (June 20, 1928 - June 29, 1964) was an American jazz alto saxophonist, flautist and bass clarinetist. Dolphy was one of several groundbreaking jazz alto players to rise to prominence in the 1960s. He was also the first important bass clarinet soloist in jazz, and among the earliest significant flute soloists. On early recordings, he occasionally played traditional B-flat soprano clarinet. - Joe Henderson
Joe Henderson (April 24, 1937 - June 30, 2001) was an American jazz tenor saxophonist. Born in Lima, Ohio, he studied music at Kentucky State College and Wayne State University before playing in Detroit at the beginning of his career. - Lee Konitz
Lee Konitz is an American jazz composer and alto saxophonist born in Chicago, Illinois. He has been noted to be one of the few alto saxophonists of his era to remain uninfluenced by Charlie Parker. His approach—more subdued and measured than that of Parker—took several fellow musicians some time to grow accustomed to after first listens. This does not mean to imply that he feels his approach toward the alto sax in any way superior to that of Parker. - Ben Webster
Benjamin Francis Webster (March 27 1909-September 20 1973) was an influential American jazz tenor saxophonist. Webster, born in Kansas City, Missouri, was considered one of the three most important "swing tenors" along with Coleman Hawkins and Lester Young. He had a tough, raspy, and brutal tone on stomps (with his own distinctive growls), yet on ballads he would play with warmth and sentiment. Stylistically he was heavily indebted to Hawkins, particularly for his low, … - Albert Ayler
Albert Ayler was an American jazz saxophonist, singer and composer. - Evan Parker
Evan Shaw Parker (born 5 April 1944 in Bristol) is a British free-improvising saxophone player from the European free jazz scene. - David Murray
David Murray (born February 19, 1955 in Oakland, California, United States) is a notable jazz musician. Murray plays mainly tenor saxophone and sometimes bass clarinet. He has recorded prolifically on a variety of labels since the mid-1970s. One critic dubbed Murray the Joyce Carol Oates of jazz, comparing Murray's prolific and consistently highly-regarded work to the noted novelist's. - Steve Lacy
Steve Lacy, born Steven Norman Lackritz in New York, was a jazz soprano saxophonist. Lacy began his career playing dixieland music with much older musicians such as Henry "Red" Allen, Pee Wee Russell, George "Pops" Foster and Zutty Singleton and then with Kansas City jazz players like Buck Clayton, Dicky Wells, and Jimmy Rushing. - Joshua Redman
Joshua Redman (born February 1, 1969) is a prominent American Neo-bop jazz saxophonist who records for Nonesuch Records. Redman, who is both African American and Jewish American, was born in Berkeley, California, to the late jazz saxophonist Dewey Redman and his wife, Renee Shedroff. He graduated from Berkeley High School, class of 1986. In 1991 he graduated summa cum laude from Harvard University, where he was a member of Phi Beta Kappa Society. - Pharoah Sanders
Pharoah Sanders (born October 13, 1940) is an American jazz saxophonist. Ornette Coleman once described him as "probably the best tenor player in the world." Sanders was born in Little Rock, Arkansas, under the name Farrell Sanders. He began his professional career playing tenor saxophone in Oakland, California. Sanders moved to New York City in 1961 after playing with rhythm and blues bands. He received his nickname "Pharoah" from Sun Ra, … - Marcus Miller
Marcus Miller (born June 14, 1959 in New York) is a jazz musician, composer and producer, perhaps best known as a bass guitarist with Miles Davis, Luther Vandross and David Sanborn. Miller is classically trained as a clarinetist, and also plays bass clarinet, keyboard, saxophone, and guitar, and is a capable singer. - Adolphe Sax
Antoine-Joseph 'Adolphe' Sax (November 6, 1814 - February 4, 1894) was a Belgian musical instrument designer and musician (clarinetist), best known for inventing the saxophone. Adolphe Sax was born in Dinant in Wallonia, Belgium. His father, Charles-Joseph Sax, was an instrument designer himself, who made several changes to the design of the horn. Adolphe began to make his own instruments at an early age, … - Tina May
Tina May (born March 30, 1961) is an English female jazz vocalist who has recorded several albums on the 33 Records label, born in Gloucester, U.K.. Her husband, Clark Tracey, appears on most or all of her albums for the label. May has also worked with Tony Coe and Nikki Iles. - Johnny Hodges
John Cornelius "Johnny" Hodges (25 July, 1907-11 May, 1970) was an American alto saxophonist and lead player of Duke Ellington's saxophone section, born in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He spent 38 years with Ellington, leaving to lead his own band from 1951 to 1955. Hodges started playing with Lloyd Scott, Sidney Bechet, Lucky Roberts and Chick Webb. When Ellington wanted to expand his band in 1928, Ellington's clarinet player Barney Bigard recommended Hodges, … - Dave Liebman
Dave Liebman (born on 4 September 1946, Brooklyn, New York) is an American saxophonist and flutist. Liebman is a New Yorker, and a History graduate from New York University. He learned both piano and saxophone as a boy but had no formal jazz education. In the late sixties he worked with Pete La Roca, Chick Corea, Dave Holland and Steve Swallow, amongst others, before joining Elvin Jones's band. In 1972 he was asked to join Miles Davis's group, … - Chris Potter
Chris Potter (born January 1, 1971) is an American jazz saxophonist, composer, and multi-instrumentalist. Born in Chicago, Illinois, Potter spent most of his childhood in Columbia, South Carolina where his mother taught psychology at the University of South Carolina. He exhibited an early interest in all kinds of music and quickly became a prodigy, mastering several instruments including guitar and piano, and finally gravitating toward the alto and tenor saxophone. - James Carter
James Carter (b. January 3 1969) is an American jazz musician. Carter was born in Detroit, Michigan and learned to play there before moving to New York City. He has been prominent as a performer and recording artist on the jazz scene since the mid-1990s, playing saxophones, flute, and bass clarinet. As a young man, he attended Blue Lake Fine Arts Camp and was a member of the group, Bird-Trane-Sco-Now. - Maceo Parker
Maceo Parker (born February 14, 1943) is a noted American funk and soul jazz saxophonist, best known for his work with James Brown in the 1960s. Parker was a prominent soloist on many of Brown's hit recordings, and a key part of his band, playing alto, tenor and baritone saxophones. Parker's rhythmic and rapid playing style draws on the earlier innovations of be-bopper Charlie Parker (no relation), and Cannonball Adderley, mixed with Brown's own innovations in funk music. - Sidney Bechet
Sidney Bechet (May 14, 1897 - May 14, 1959) was a jazz saxophonist, clarinetist, and composer. He was one of the first important soloists in jazz (beating cornetist/trumpeter Louis Armstrong to the recording studio by several months and later playing duets with Armstrong), and was perhaps the first notable jazz saxophonist of any sort. Forceful delivery, well-constructed improvisations, and a distinctive wide vibrato characterized Bechet's playing. - Artie Shaw
Artie Shaw (May 23, 1910, New York, New York - December 30, 2004, Thousand Oaks, California) is considered to be one of the best jazz musicians of his time jazz clarinetist, composer, bandleader; he is also the author of both fiction and non-fiction writings. - James Moody
James Moody (born March 26 1925) is a jazz saxophone and flute player. He was born in Savannah, Georgia. As he grew up in New Jersey, he was attracted to the saxophone after hearing George Holmes Tate, Don Byas, and Count Basie. He recorded his first album for Blue Note Records in 1948. He is best known for his hit "Moody's Mood for Love," an improvisation based on "I'm in the Mood for Love"; in performance, he often improvises vocals for that tune. - Dave Koz
Dave Koz (March 27, 1963) is an American jazz saxophonist and radio host. Koz often draws comparisons to another well-known saxophonist, David Sanborn. Because the two sound almost alike, Koz is sometimes billed as "the second coming of Sanborn." Dave Koz usually plays soprano and alto saxophones, but sometimes plays tenor and occasionally baritone. - Kenny Garrett
Kenny Garrett is an American post bop jazz saxophonist and flutist. He was born in Detroit, Michigan in 1960. His father was a tenor saxophonist. Kenny's career took off when he joined the Duke Ellington Orchestra in 1978, then led by Duke's son, Mercer Ellington. Three years later he played in the Mel Lewis Orchestra (playing the music of Thad Jones) and also the Dannie Richmond Quartet (focusing on Charles Mingus's music). - Jan Garbarek
Jan Garbarek (born March 4, 1947 in Mysen, Norway) a Norwegian tenor and soprano saxophonist, active in the jazz, classical, and world music genres. Garbarek was the only child of a former Polish prisoner of war and a Norwegian farmer's daughter. Garbarek grew up in Oslo. At 21, he married Vigdis. His daughter Anja Garbarek is also a musician. Garbarek's sound is one of the hallmarks of the ECM record label, which has released virtually all of his recordings. - Tom Scott
Tom Scott (born May 19, 1948, Los Angeles, California) is a multiple award-winning saxophonist, composer, arranger, conductor and bandleader of the west coast jazz/jazz fusion ensemble, the L.A. Express. His best-known works are the theme songs for TV series from the 1970s - "Starsky and Hutch" and "Streets of San Francisco". - Nick Drake
Nicholas Rodney Drake was an English singer-songwriter and musician best known for his acoustic, autumnal songs. His primary instrument was the guitar, though he was also proficient at piano, clarinet, and saxophone. Although he failed to find a wide audience during his lifetime, Drake's work has since grown steadily in stature, to the extent that he is now widely considered one of the most influential English singer-songwriters of the last 50 years. - Captain Beefheart
Don Van Vliet (born Don Glen Vliet on January 15 1941, in Glendale, California, USA) is a musician and visual artist, best known by the pseudonym Captain Beefheart. His musical work was mainly conducted with a rotating assembly of musicians called the Magic Band, which was active from the mid-1960s through to the early 1980s. Van Vliet was chiefly a singer and harmonica player, occasionally playing noisy, … - Ernie Watts
Ernie Watts (born Ernest James Watts on October 23, 1945 in Norfolk, Virginia) is an American jazz and rhythm and blues musician. He plays saxophone (tenor, alto and soprano) and flute. He might be best known for his work with Charlie Haden's Quartet West and his Grammy Awards as an instrumentalist. He has also toured with the Rolling Stones, joining them on their 1981 tour. - Paquito D'Rivera
Paquito D'Rivera (b. 4 June, 1948) is a Grammy award-winning alto saxophonist, clarinetist and soprano saxophonist from Havana, Cuba. - Steve Coleman
Steve Coleman, born, is an American saxophone player, spontaneous composer, composer and band leader. His music and concepts have been a heavy influence on contemporary jazz. - Roscoe Mitchell
Roscoe Mitchell is an African American composer and jazz instrumentalist, mostly known for being "a technically superb — if idiosyncratic — saxophonist." He has been called "one of the key figures" in avant-garde jazz who has been "at the forefront of modern music" for the past thirty years. He continues "to be a major figure." He has even been called a "super musician" and the New York Times has mentioned that he "qualifies as an iconoclast." - Sam Rivers
Samuel Carthorne Rivers (born September 25, 1923, El Reno, Oklahoma) is a jazz musician and composer. He performs on soprano and tenor saxophones, bass clarinet, flute, and piano. - Michael Moore
Michael Moore (born December 4, 1954) is an American-born jazz musician (clarinet, saxophone) and composer who has resided in the Netherlands since 1982. - George Coleman
George Coleman (born March 8, 1935 in Memphis, Tennessee) is an American hard bop saxophonist, known chiefly for his work with Miles Davis and Herbie Hancock in the 1960s. Coleman taught himself to play the alto saxophone in his teens, inspired (like many jazz musicians of his generation) by Charlie Parker. Among his schoolmates were Harold Mabern, Booker Little, Frank Strozier, Hank Crawford and Charles Lloyd. - Yusef Lateef
Dr. Yusef Lateef (born William Emanuel Huddleston, October 9, 1920) is an American jazz musician. He plays principally on tenor saxophone and flute. He is known for his innovative blending of "Eastern" music with American jazz. He also plays the oboe, bamboo flute, shanai, shofar, arghul, sarewa, and koto.
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