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- Bio – Marianne Matheny-Katz (M2K Jazz) – written by Sandy Asirvatham
The rock-n-roll dreams of our youth may get shunted aside as we grow up. The halls of government and business and good-paying jobs may be teeming with frustrated former musicians and secret air-guitar players. In at least one case, though, a woman who once abandoned her considerable youthful promise as a singer has found her way back to it—and her growing body of fans is extremely glad for that. Marianne Matheny-Katz is an economic analyst for the Army by day, but one of Baltimore’s finest-ever jazz vocalists by night. A two-time second-place winner in the Billie Holiday Vocal Competition, Marianne has been compared in the press to “Billie Holiday and Bessie Smith and at moments a slightly higher pitched Sarah Vaughn,” and her pure sound has been likened to “a beautiful horn.” Born and raised in New York City, Marianne sang folk songs in coffee houses in her teens and twenties, but stepped back from the spotlight in order to raise a family and pursue her economics career. After a long hiatus from active performing, in 1997 she began singing with the Annapolis-based band Park House Jam (www.parkhousejam.com). Marianne certainly has the “pipes” to belt out the kinds of raucous, party-friendly blues and R&B covers favored by Park House’s fans, but at some point she felt called toward the subtler art of jazz vocalizing. She began performing jazz standards and studying with some of the area’s most accomplished musical mentors, including pianist Vince Evans and vocalists Ronnie Wells, Sheila Jordan, and Jay Clayton. In 2003 she formed her own M2K Jazz Ensemble. Its regular and guest performers have included keyboardist/composer Lafayette Gilchrist, guitarist O’Donel Levy, and saxophonist Craig Alston. With M2K and other jazz/blues combos, Marianne has been a featured performer at the Frederick Blues Festival, Artscape, Baltimore Blues Festival, Columbia Lakefront Festival, Takoma Station, Talianos, 49 West, Twins Jazz, Starland Café, The Tremont Park Hotel, and many other venues. Her performances, low-key but beautiful, always entice new listeners to join her rabidly loyal fan base. Never happy to hog the spotlight, Marianne has also become an enthusiastic promoter of other local musicians. A founding Board member of the Baltimore Jazz Alliance (BJA), she has produced the highly successful concert series “Music on Pagoda Hill” in Baltimore’s Patterson Park, and with fellow BJA member Camay Murphy, she spearheaded a jazz concert series at the Maryland General Hospital, which featured the Eubie Blake Legacy Band. Jazzway 6004 (www.jazzway6004.org ) is another initiative Marianne and her husband Howard have embarked upon to produce the first regularly scheduled house concert series, devoted to jazz, in Baltimore. Jazzway 6004, features local, regional and touring jazz artists, and kicked off on June 1st 2007 to a sold out audience. Marianne’s addictive voice can be heard on her 2003 CD with Park House Jam, FULLY EXPOSED. She will soon release an album of jazz standards performed with Vince Evans, as well as a live concert CD, recorded at a 2005 event featuring Marianne, the M2K musicians, and several guest vocalists. _________________________________________________________Sandy Asirvatham is a Baltimore based free-lance writer and an accomplished jazz musician with a brand new CD called “Memoir”. She wrote the popular Baltimore City Paper column, “Underwhelmed” from 1998-2003.
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The thing that is making jazz healthy today is that people are coming out of other backgrounds - from rock, folk, from ethnic music. It's changing the music, and for the better.~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Billy Taylor
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
Music
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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New CD release
December 14, 2009 at 1pm to January 1, 2010 at 1pm – My Website
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Lezlie Harrison and Saul Rubin Two-gether
December 28, 2009 from 12pm to 9pm – The Zinc Bar
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THE LADIES SOCIAL CLUB-New Year's Eve Party!
December 31, 2009 at 7:30pm to January 1, 2010 at 1:30am – Clarion Hotel
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BACK ALLEY PLAYERS@NUYORICAN POETS CAFE
January 2, 2010 from 9pm to 11pm – NUYORICAN POETS CAFE
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BACK ALLEY PLAYERS@NUYORICAN POETS CAFE
January 2, 2010 from 9pm to 11pm – NUYORICAN POETS CAFE
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Tish Oney - The Peggy Lee Project
January 8, 2010 from 9:45pm to 11pm – The Metropolitan Room
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Tish Oney
January 9, 2010 from 7:15pm to 7:30pm – Hilton Hotel - New York Suite
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Tish Oney - The Peggy Lee Project
January 9, 2010 from 10pm to 10:15pm – Hilton Hotel - Beekman Suite
Birthdays
JAPAN JAZZ NETWORK
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What a pleasure it is to have you as a friend in Jazz. I know that we will physically meet all of our "new" jazz friends at some juncture on this journey.
Until then Enjoy the Ride.
Blessings & Light,
miK
Please come join us at www.ilovejazz.ning.com
Cynthia
Sweetheart
Blessings in your music journey