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Erly Thornton
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Erly Thornton's Page
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Profile Information
- What is your profession?
- Musician
- What Instrument Do you Play?
- Saxophone
- Where Are you located?
- Orlando, Florida United States
- How did you find out about TGJN?
- Marly Ikeda
- About Me:
- Playing the saxophone has always been emotionally intense for Erly Thornton. Each performance is a connection this artist and his audience mutually enjoy! Born in Nashville into a family that had artistic talent on both sides, mother being a painter and father being a trumpet player, he had no choice but to experience a double doses of creativity from birth.
Starting on the sax in the 5th grade, Erly was asked to play in front of “the boys”, his father’s musician friends, every weekend to the music of Ray Charles. His improvisational talent began there.
Erly began taking the music into his room to learn every lick he could from Jazz artists such as Herb Alpert, Grover, Sanborn, Najee, George Howard, Brecker Brother Band, and others, learning their works by memory. But he also “felt” the R&B and Funk of groups like Cameo, EWF, Zapp, Stevie Wonder, Prince, and The Time contributing to his multi-faceted style.
During the late 80’s Erly started college and began playing professionally for the first time. In addition to Nashville, Erly performed in the cities and surrounding areas of Knoxville, Chattanooga and even spent some time on World Famous Beale Street in Memphis. Graduating from Tennessee State University in Electrical Engineering, in the 90’s Erly moved to Orlando where he began working in his field.
However, leaving music behind turned out to be impossible. Very soon Erly was performing in Central Florida with several groups as well as a solo act.
The unexpected breakup of one of the most successful of his Jazz groups thus far, B.One, prompted him to pursue a solo career in earnest.
Erly began writing in 2004 composing many of the songs on his current CD. Drawing from his past he initially decided to create music using the strong Bass and Drums of the R&B of his youth, creating funky Jazz licks over the top. The effort was initially titled “The Old School Beat” with the songs “Call It A Day”, “JJ’s Bounce” and “Grooveelatious”. Later Erly realized that his music needed to encompass the present as well as the future and included Latin Flavored tracks such as “Mura De Cozumel” and in collaboration with Veit Renn of Renn Music Productions created songs such as “Free”, “Embarkation” and others.
“The Old School Beat” became “My Life” detailing the emotional experiences that we ALL have on a daily basis. Erly performed with original Jazz groups like Jerry Wilborn and Limited Access in Knoxville, and in Nashville with AyreTyte, a contemporary Jazz cover band. Erly also performed with R&B artists Phil Perry, Glenn Jones and Howard Hewitt as a member of their show bands during performances in Nashville in the 90’s. In Orlando, he became a key member and lead voice of B.One an all original Jazz band that quickly became one of the hottest groups in Central Florida, recording 2 CDs, opening for the Clearwater Jazz Festival, with Mindi Abair, and opening for Spyro Gyra at the House of Blues in Orlando.
Earlier this year, Erly debuted his solo career opening for The Rippingtons in Orlando in July 2007 and finishing with one of the first standing ovations an opening act has received in Orlando recent memory.
Now that the CD “My Life” has been released, Erly expects to become a regular on the Jazz Festival and Concert circuit. Expect much from this artist as he is sure to impress!
- Website:
- http://www.erlythornton.com
About
MEMBER NOTES
Dear Tamm E:
Just a note to tell you that it is nice to read about you!!!
You share so much great info about others and about the music, but nice to know that you are WAILIN' yourself and getting appreciation!!
Global Jazz Network is a really important way for all of us to keep hooked up and informed and to SLOWLY BUT SURELY SPREAD THE MESSAGE AND THE PHILOSOPHY of what Jazz is in its many different forms and what the styles are/is all about.
Just played for Paquito's honoring and received gold medal
John Faddis, save Brubeck, James moody and a bunch of KILLER YOUNG players and we all played and spoke about Paquito and jazz and all fine music
and Roberta Gamborini, who was excellent.
wish you had been there!
Through you, Donald Harrison hooked me up with Pittsburgh Jazz info and I feel like i am living there just reading about all the great happenings.
As Fall is here, I am back to my normal insane schedule, but wanted to write you back BEFORE The STATUTE OF LIMITATIONS goes into effect. I am my own secretary, so I am dedicated but SLOW!
And I can't fire myself as my own secretary or I might get hit with an Age Discrimination Lawsuit (in case I decided to sue myself for clerical incompetence).
As of this moment, a new documentary film is being made about me, to be released a few months after my 80th birthday, which is coming up next year Nov. 17, 2010. (12 months from now).
The film will end with the videoing of the big 80th birthday bash at Symphony Space in NYC and then have snippets of films from the past, with all kinds of fun stuff from the 50's thru today.
It will be called "David Amram: The First 80 Years"
Fortunately, I don't have to edit the hundreds of hours of footage or do new music the score, since the film maker, Larry Kraman is also the founder of Newport Classics recordings and knows all my symphonic as well as operatic, theater, film and jazz and world music work, so I am in good hands!!
The same people at Newport Classics Recordings are also making a Spoken Word series for I-Tunes, with me reading from my three books Vibrations, Offbeat: Collaborating with Kerouac and Upbeat: Nine Lives of a Musical Cat.
And they are also recording some of my chamber music compositions and a new jazz record,
Next Spring my opera "12th Night", with libretto by Joe Papp (all words of Shakespeare), is having its eighth production and being FILMED!! Even most dead composers aren't that lucky!!!
This last five weeks I have appeared all over the country at concerts of my music, conducting and playing, doing spoken word with music, jazz, folk and world music festivals, film festivals and readings from my books.
Just the first week of October, I played Lowell Celebrates Kerouac festival in Lowell Mass, then the at midnight , following my last concert there , drove all night to Lagaurda Airport to catch the early Sunday mornng flight for the annual Farm Aid Concert in St Louis, where i played with Willie Nelson's band. The next morning (Monday the 5th , I flew bck to NYC in tme for my monthly concert at Cornelia Street in Greenwich Village.
The next night (Tuesday the 6th) the memorial at Symphony Space for Frank Mccourt, and the next day Wednesday the 7th) the celebration of the new authorized biography of Thelonious Monk with members of his family and musicians I have known since I first arrived in NYC in 1955!!
The 11th i flew off to Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates,( i got at least get a few hours sleep) and tried to catch up on over 200 e-mails during the 13 hour flight, before arriving there and performing a concert of global music in conjunction with the score I composed for Teri McLuhan's new documentary feature film The Frontier Ghandi.
Then back in the USA in time to do programs centered around a performance of my Saxophone concerto Ode to Lord Buckley, in Loudoun Virginia ..
Then I went off to Toronto Nov 1st for a concert and appearance at the Diaspora Film Festival .
Now i am back at home hiding out composing and writing!
I am starting my fourth book "David Amram: The First 80 Years", (the same name as the new doc film being made about me), which will be finished at the end of next year and will end, like the film, with the monstro birthday bash concert for my Big 80... 12 months from now....(Nov 17 2010) in New York.
And every day, still finding time to continue composing a new orchestral work, having been doing it while on the run, and now every minute when I can hide out at the Farm in between travels.
And performing whenever possible with my three kids, each of whom have their own bands.
So as the BIG 80 approaches twelve months from now, (2010) while I may be still shy, I am not yet the retiring type.
Most of my ever-changing my schedule info. when i can get my elderly secretary (unfortunately myself) to type it up, is posted on my web page www.davidamram.com under Upcoming Events.
And my e-mail amramdavid@aol.com is always the best way to reach me as I carry my laptop with me everywhere, and Facebook, MySpace, etc., is hard to deal with and not always reliable!
You might find it fun to access an old performance of my 1971 Rondo a la Turca on the Internet for FREE!!!
The person who is conducting the Chicago Symphony and playing the middle eastern flute (who looks like my grandson) is actually a much younger looking me in 1977, recording for a PBS network TV show about my music. Pepper Adams and Jerry Dodgion are also playing.
In 1977, most of members of the Chicago Symphony who appear on the recording of this performance had never heard, much less ever played, very much music from the Middle East, and since I write everything out on paper accurately to indicate the way it should be played, that's what they were playing, and they actually began to sound like the Radio Beirut Orchestra, and suddenly as the piece went on, they started feeling something different than they had ever felt before, as they played.
It is really fun to watch their faces as they started getting ingo the old time magical groove that Middle eastern music creates and takes you into.
During the first few minutes of the piece, you can see the musicians all playing up a storm but looking as if they were thinking that I was an alien from another planet in outer space, and had brought some extra terrestrial music with me for them to play.
And then as the piece progresses, you can see, as well as hear, that by the end of the piece, the idiom of this music got them excited enough to be actually enjoying playing it!!
And playing it really well!
That's what music, like film, novels, poetry, painting, dance, language and good HOME COOKING does for all of us.
It takes you to that place from where it comes, and makes you feel that you now have a new home in a new part of the world.
I send cheers from that endless road and wish you joy and energy for all you do
David
I was just saying that you knocked this out of the park with TGJN. We have needed something like this for so long and I am telling my friends about this. I said that it is sort of like a myspace for jazz but it is actually so much more. This is real. The people here truly love jazz and we know people like that are not your average people.
I have felt for a long time that straight-ahead jazz has been slipping away from us. I have hope now that there will be a resurgence (or shall I say an insurgency:-) to bring this baby back full force!
You just knocked it out of the park. Thanks again.
xoxo,
Janie
Events
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Mel Brown Quartet
March 25, 2009 at 8pm to March 27, 2013 at 11pm – Jimmy Mak's
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Workout
December 3, 2009 from 9pm to 11pm – Casale Monferrato
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Luigi Ruberti Quintet
December 4, 2009 at 9pm to December 6, 2009 at 12pm – Naples
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Betty Blue Jazz Band
December 5, 2009 from 6pm to 9:30pm – The Crystal Lounge( near Brooklyn College area)
-
ROME NEAL in Concert
December 5, 2009 at 9pm to December 6, 2009 at 1am – The Nuyorican Poets Cafe
-
“Grazie”
December 17, 2009 from 6pm to 9pm – Ivrea
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Saturday JAZZ Nights at Chelsea Wine Bar
December 19, 2009 at 8:30pm to December 20, 2009 at 12:30am – Chelsea Wine Bar
-
Tish Oney - The Peggy Lee Project
January 10, 2010 from 7pm to 8:15pm – The Triad
Birthdays
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We are just about a week away from the launch of URB ALT Festival 2008. Saturday June 21st will find several amazing musicians and visual artists touching down at Harlem Stage Gatehouse for 7 hours of FREE outdoor entertainment. All of the artists will be coming together at noon to celebrate the legacy of Sun Ra in their own distinct fashions. The URB ALT Festival blends generational, gender, political and cultural lines by nurturing creative collaborations between nationally established musicians and underground musicians. URB ALT sees the arts as a service oriented industry that should exist to give artists and audiences more than what they expected. Most importantly June 21st at Harlem Stage Gatehouse is going to be FUN. See all the particulars below.
Hope to see you guys out with your family and friends!
Peace and Light
Waberi
PS Please enjoy the URB ALT Trailer.
Comment and let us know what you think:
http://www. youtube. com/watch?v=d5_FoqmBz5k
URB ALT Festival 2008 Lineup
Harlem Stage Gatehouse - Saturday June 21, noon-7pm
150 Convent Avenue Harlem, NY
All events hosted by Shena Verrett of Girls On…Productions
1)Kendal - Smooth soul vocals over an angst filled lovers rock groove
2) Amanda Ray - Downbeat ambient funk goddess rides the the 0s and 1s
3)Marla Turner, Freedom Rockstars - Lower Eastside power trio with origins in the Wax Poetics electronic music world
4)Micah Gaugh - Sensual electronic melodies with a bite of the avant garde
5)Devi - Funky tantric power trio fronted by a bluesy guitar shredding Jersey girl
6)Tenderhead - Soul laced punk/pop/rock melodicism with a high fashion sensibility
7)Millsted - Latin rock/punk experimentalism with an irreverent Bronx, NY edge Umm...yeah
8)Melvin Gibbs - Avant-garde bass master bangs one out solo(Rollins Band, Harriet Tubman)
9)Waberi Jordan - Smokey jazz/soul vocal stylings out of Los Angeles by way of Saturn
10)Tay Zonday - "Chocolate Rain". Nuff Said
11)MuthaWit Orchestra - Futuristic 10-20 piece cosmic soul/rock/classical big band and whatnot
BAMcafe - Friday June 27, 8pm-11pm
30 Lafayette Avenue, Brooklyn, NY
1)Brandee Younger - Polyphonic harp virtuoso for Ravi Coltrane
2)Faith - LES reggae/rock/soul power legends
3)Brig Feltus with members of Pillow Theory - Queen of Myspace melds her soul/rock gypsy sound with the punk skronk of Pillow Theory
4)MuthaWit Orchestra with special guests
BAMcafe - Saturday June 28, 8pm-11pm
1)V. Jeffrey Smith - Songwriter and Performer extraordinaire for the rock/soul/pop band The Family Stand
2)Tenderhead
3)MuthaWit Orchestra with special guests
Directions
Harlem Stage Gatehouse
1 train to 137th@Broadway or B, C, trains to 135th St.@ St. Nicholas or 2, 3 to 135th@Lenox or the A, D train to 145th
BAMcafe
2, 3, 4, 5, Q, N, R, M, G, B, C or D trains to Atlantic Avenue/Pacific St. Subway Station
I'm so happy to see you here! Welcome my friend and let's stay in touch.
Kisses and hugs,
May