Support Live Jazz!

Name: Tia Fuller

(saxophonist, composer, educator) “ Tia Fuller stakes her claim to being one of the finest new musicians on the scene, ” states Terrell Holmes in an All About Jazz review. Originating from a musical family, Fuller Sound , Tia began her music education in piano and flute at the early age of three. She has studied saxophone with Joe Jennings where she graduated Magna Cum Laude receiving her B.A. in Music from Spelman College. As the full time Teaching Assistant in Jazz Studies by directing Jazz Ensemble II and III and teaching improvisation, Tia has also received a Masters Degree (M.M.) in Jazz Pedagogy and Performance from the University of Colorado @ Boulder . Later, studying with Wessell Anderson, Javon Jackson, Jesse Davis led her to perform with numerous jazz luminaries including, Ed Thigpen, Mikey Roker, Charles Fambrough, Tony Reedus, Benny Powell, Joe Ford, Ndugu Chancellor. Similarly, she has performed with big bands such as the Jon Faddis Jazz Orchestra, Nancy Wilson Jazz Orchestra, Duke Ellington Orchestra, Gerald Wilson Big Band, DIVA Jazz Orchestra and a featured artist with Don Byron in Stravinsky ’ s “ Ebony Concerto. ” She has also been a featured artist in Jazz Improv Magazine “ Saxophone Edition ” (2004-2005), New York ’ s All About Jazz Magazine and Hot House. Other honors include her performances at the following: Detroit Jazz Festival, Jazz Fest Vien (Vienna, Austria), and the Clifford Brown Jazz Festival. Tia has also been the winner of 1999 IAJE ’ s Sisters in Jazz Collegiate Competition, a winner of Vail Jazz Party ’ s Young Talent All-Stars, featured in DOWNBEAT article for Up in Coming Musicians and chosen as TA/ Clinician for IAJEs Sister ’ s in Jazz Quintet (2000) Over the past several years Tia has taught ensembles, master classes and lectures at the Stanford Jazz Workshop, University of Massachusetts at Amherst, Duquesne University (lecture), Kansas State University (lecture), University of Colorado at Boulder Jazz Camp, University of Denver “ Colorado Jazz Workshop, ” and performed a week-long residency at Miami-Dade Community College where she served as a clinician/ guest artist in local middle school, high school and college ensembles. Tia was also selected as a guest artist/ clinician at Ohio State University ’ s “ Women in Jazz ” Symposium, a clinician at the International Association of Jazz Educators Convention (IAJE) and at Purchase College. Currently, Tia extends her talents and expertise through serving as the director of Jazz Museum in Harlem: Harmony Ensemble. This year she will also be serving a two-week term as artist in residence at New Mexico State University (2006), where she will tour with a nonet and clinic local schools and colleges. Through her efforts to reach the younger generation, this fall Tia will be presenting a lecture/performance for WBGO ’ s Children Series. Now residing in the New York Metropolitan area, Tia has released her “ exhilarating debut as a leader, Pillar of Strength “ (Holmes). In promoting this album, her quintet has been featured at the prestigious Lincoln Center ’ s Dizzy ’ s Club Coca-Cola , Spelman College, MIT as well as various New York Jazz clubs such as the Jazz Gallery, 55 bar, Pumpkins and Cecil ’ s. In addition, Tia has also recorded with Nancy Wilson Jazz Orchestra, Sean Jones Quintet (Mack Avenue Records) featuring master artisits such as Ralph Peterson and Mulgrew Miller, the Brad Leali Big Band, the Miki Hayama Quintet, Kit McClure Big Band and rap artist Joe Budden. On February 20, 2007, Tia relesed her sophomore album "Healing Space" as a Mack Ave Record artist, as well as touring nationally and internationally with the R&B star BEYONCE, promoting her most recent album "B-day." In addition, Tia remains an integral part of the jazz community in continuing to tour with the Ralph Peterson Sextet, Sean Jones quintet, T.S. Monk Septet, Rufus Reid Septet, as well as her own quintet in clubs, festivals and universities thoughtout the United States.

Name: Steve Turre
Instrument: Trombone

One of the world's preeminent jazz innovators, trombonist and seashellist Steve Turre, has consistently won both the Readers' and Critics' polls in JazzTimes, Downbeat, and Jazziz for Best Trombone and for Best Miscellaneous Instrumentalist (shells). Turre was born to Mexican-American parents and grew up in the San Francisco Bay area where he absorbed daily doses of mariachi, blues and jazz. While attending Sacramento State University, he joined the Escovedo Brothers salsa band, which began his career-long involvement with that genre. In 1972 Steve Turre's career picked up momentum when Ray Charles hired him to go on tour. A year later Turre's mentor Woody Shaw brought him into Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers. After his tenure with Blakey, Turre went on to work with a diverse list of musicians from the jazz, Latin, and pop worlds, including Dizzy Gillespie, McCoy Tyner, J.J. Johnson, Herbie Hancock, Lester Bowie, Tito Puente, Mongo Santamaria, Van Morrison, Pharoah Sanders, Horace Silver, Max Roach, and Rahsaan Roland Kirk. The latter introduced hum to the seashell as an instrument. Soon after that, while touring in Mexico City with Woody Shaw, Turre's relatives informed him that his ancestors similarly played the shells. Since then, Turre has incorporated seashells into his diverse musical style. In addition to performing as a member of the Saturday Night Live Band since 1984, Turre leads several different ensembles. Sanctified Shells utilizes the seashell in a larger context, transforming his horn section into a "shell choir". Turre's Spring 1999 Verve release, Lotus Flower, showcases his Sextet With Strings. The recording explores many great standards and original compositions arranged by Turre for a unique instrumentation of trombone and shells, violin, cello, piano, bass and drums. Turre's quartet and quintet provide a setting based in tradition and stretching the limits conceptually and stylistically. In the Summer of 2000, Telarc released In The Spur of the Moment. This recording features Steve with three different quartets, each with a different and distinct master pianist: Ray Charles, Chucho Valdes, and Stephen Scott. Turre's self-titled Verve release pioneers a unique artistic vision, drawing upon jazz, Afro-Cuban, and Brazilian sources. This innovative recording also features Cassandra Wilson, Randy Brecker, Graciela, Mongo Santamaria and J.J. Johnson. Previously Turre recorded Right There and Rhythm Within, featuring Herbie Hancock, Jon Faddis, Pharoah Sanders, and Sanctified Shells, on Verve's subsidiary label, Antilles. Steve Turre continually evolves as a musician and arranger. He has a strong command of all musical genres and when it comes to his distinct brand of jazz, he always keeps one foot in the past and one in the future.

Name: Billy Bang
Instrument: Violin

The violin is hardly the first instrument that comes to mind when you think about jazz, but that's never daunted Billy Bang, one of the instrument's most adventurous exponents. Over the past 26 years Bang's hard-edged tone, soulful sense of traditional swing and evocatively expressive style has enhanced over two dozen albums by top names in a variety of genres, from the blistering funk of Bootsy Collins and the harmolodic groove of Ronald Shannon Jackson's Decoding Society to the intergalactic uproar of Sun Ra. With more than 15 albums under his own leadership, nearly a dozen more in co-led endeavors, and five more with the String Trio of New York (which he co-founded in 1977 with guitarist James Emery and bassist John Lindberg), Billy Bang is one of the more prolific and original members of the progressive scene. Born William Vincent Walker in Mobile, Alabama in 1947, his family moved to New York City's Harlem while he was still an infant. In junior high school he was nicknamed Billy Bang after a cartoon character, and over his initial protests, it stuck. Around the same time, his primary interest turned to music, and he took up the violin, switching to percussion in the early '60s when he became captivated by Afro-Cuban rhythms. While attending a Massachusetts prep school under full scholarship, he met and began playing with fellow-student, folk-singer Arlo Guthrie. Drafted into the army following graduation, Bang was sent to Vietnam, an experience that profoundly affected his life, often quite painfully. Returning home and radicalized, Billy became active in the anti-war movement, and by the late '60s had returned to music. Heavily inspired by the exploratory fire of John Coltrane, Eric Dolphy, Ornette Coleman and the liberating energy of the free-jazz movement, Bang returned to the violin as his principal means of expression. Attending New York's Queens College, and studying privately with renowned violinist Leroy Jenkins, Bang became a key member of the dynamic New York avant-garde scene of the '70s. Forming his own group, The Survival Ensemble, and working with artists like David Murray, Frank Lowe, William Parker and the legendary Sam Rivers, Billy began to reach an international audience in 1977 with the String Trio, remaining with the cooperative ensemble for nine years. During these same years he continued to tour and record with his own ensembles, as well as genre-busting ensembles like The Decoding Society and Bill Laswell's Material (alongside guitar giant Sonny Sharrock). He even briefly led his own funk-oriented band, Forbidden Planet, and in 1981 taught at the University of Nebraska. He continued to work and collaborate with notables like Murray, Don Cherry and James 'Blood ' Ulmer, and in 1982 began a ten-year association with the incomparable Sun Ra, concluding with a 1992 quartet recording for Soul Note, "A Tribute to Stuff Smith," dedicated to the father of the jazz violin. In 1990, Bang formed the Solomonic Quartet with trumpeter Ahmed Abdullah, and continued to freelance and lead his own groups. Relocating to Berlin in 1996 where he lived until 2000, Bang criss-crossed the Atlantic frequently, performing all over Europe and doing five tours through the South and Midwest with percussionist Abbey Rader, three of which included tenorman Frank Lowe. He also began a regular working relationship with percussionist Kahil El'Zabar in 1996, performing in duet, and sometimes as a trio with esteemed Art Ensemble of Chicago co-founder and bassist Malachi Favors Maghostut. Currently, Bang records for Canada's Justin Time Records, for which he recorded "Bang On" in 1997 and "The Big Bang Theory" in 1999. His latest CD (released in October 2001) entitled "Vietnam: The Aftermath" evokes and confronts the memories of his Vietnam experiences and showcases the fine compositional skills that have always marked his own recordings. Returning to New York in 2000, Bang has continued his busy schedule, touring Europe in the Fall of 2001 with David Murray, continuing a musical interaction that has lasted over 25 years with a series of concerts and a collaborative dance work in Birmingham, England. He also tours Europe in November 2001 and the U.S. in January 2002 in duet with El'Zabar; and performs in England with the fusion ensemble Sonicphonics, with whom he's worked since 1998. A dazzling improviser, excellent composer, and provocative leader, Billy Bang remains on the cutting-edge of jazz expression.