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RON APREA
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Profile Information
- What is your profession?
- Musician, Producer, Composer
- What Instrument Do you Play?
- Saxophone, clarinet, flute
- Where Are you located?
- New York
- How did you find out about TGJN?
- Dr.Nelson Harrison
- About Me:
- Some biographical highlights:Ron Aprea, composer, arranger, producer, saxophonist, clarinetist, and flutist, has played lead alto with the bands of Les Elgart, Tito Puente, Frank Foster, Charlie Persip, and Lionel Hampton. Also played with Woody Herman, Buddy Morrow, Billy May and others.
While with Hamp's band, some highlights were a Ramsey Lewis television special, and a recorded concert at the Smithsonian Institute, where Ron's solos were taped and put into their Archives. Ron was the featured soloist and arranger for performances with Nat Adderley at the world-famous Apollo Theatre, and he also performed at the Paramount Theatre with King Curtis' Big Band. Ron has played shows for literally hundreds of stars, including Clint Holmes, Rita Moreno, Chita Rivera, Billy Eckstine, etc.
In 1974, Ron recorded with John Lennon and Elton John on the album entitled Walls and Bridges. The all-star horn section included Howard Johnson, Frank Vicari, and Steve Madaio. Ron was a featured soloist on the jazz-gospel album Free to Be Free. He also wrote, arranged, and produced his own album, Ronnie April's Positive Energy Volume 1. Ron had his own TV special on WNYC, and was a featured soloist on Broadway's Song of Singapore.
Ron's compositions, arrangements, and productions skills can be heard on Angela DeNiro's first CD, Just For the Fun Of It, as well as her second release, Angela DeNiro...Swingin' With Legends, featuring Lionel Hampton, Frank Foster, and Lew Tabackin.
Ron was featured with the Kenny Barron Trio at the 1998 Lionel Hampton Jazz Festival, and was part of the All-Star cast, which included Frank Foster, Frank Wess, Bill Watrous, Jon Faddis, Al Grey,Ray Brown, Marion McPartland, Abbey Lincoln, and Diana Krall.
Ron has three 1998 GRAMMY nomination entries: Producer of the Year,(Swingin' With Legends), and Best Instrumental Arrangement Accompanying a Vocalist for Angela DeNiro's Avalon & The Song Is You. Ron completed an arranging assignment for vocalist Alex Donner, featuring nine of Ron's arrangements. Alex released the first of a 2-CD set in the spring of 2001. Ron co-hosted a weekly jazz radio show on WSHR, 91.9 FM, New York, with his wife, vocalist Angela DeNiro. Their show, Rush-Hour Rendezvous ran successfully for two years, and featured great jazz and musical conversation.
In January 2001, Ron's band, with Angela DeNiro, was featured on "BET-TV". The national program, called "Jazz Discovery", showcased jazz artists in competition, and was judged by a panel of three, which included jazz legend Chick Corea. Angela, with Ron's band, won the competition.
Ron and Angela DeNiro made a cameo appearance on legendary jazz vocalist Mark Murphy's CD entitled "Links," released in September of 2001 on the High Note Label. In August 2001, Ron performed in an All-Star band for a Charlie Parker Birthday tribute in Harlem, New York. The band featured four alto saxophonists. Playing alongside Ron were Jimmy Zaff, Gerald Hayes, and James Spaulding.The rhythm section featured Danny Mixon on piano, Bob Cunningham on bass, and Andre Strobaer on drums.
Ron wrote the arrangements for Angela DeNiro's third CD, My Shining Hour. One of Ron's compositions, For Phil, is dedicated to Phil Woods, who has been a major source of inspiration to Ron since the mid 60's. Ron's tribute to Phil, performed by Ms. DeNiro, exudes the warmth and love Ron has for the legendary alto saxophonist. This CD was released in August 2005.
In 2006 Ron, arranged, performed on, and produced an album for jazz vocalist Meegan Coleman entitled "I hear Music."
In 2007 Ron arranged, performed on, and produced an album for vocalist Damian entitled "Follow Your Dreams."
Ron and Angela headlined the Les Nuits du Jazz Festival in Nantes, France on Nov. 9 & 10, 2007. Ron's son Matt Aprea made his European debut on violin at same festival.
When not performing, Ron spends much of his time in his recording studio, doing seminars, teaches privately on woodwinds, composition, arranging, and improvisation.
Currently Ron is producing an album with vocalist Damian (his second) featuring trumpeter Brian Lynch, pianist Cecilia Coleman, and other jazz greats. The album will be released in the Spring of 2009. Ron scored the entire album and recorded it at his own Birdland Studios. Will keep you posted.
For video clips, please go to website. www.angeladeniro.com ...Contact Ron here or at: deniro@optonline.net
- Website:
- http://www.angeladeniro.com
RON APREA's Photos
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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)
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“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
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Tish Oney - The Peggy Lee Project
January 10, 2010 from 7pm to 8:15pm – The Triad
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Jazz On Edge Volume 2
February 6, 2010 from 6pm to 10pm – Garden Theatre
Birthdays
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Feinstein's was great....the band was great and George Schuller did play the gig....his ankle is all better now (he broke it 3 months ago).....really sweet guy and great player....take care!
Irene
HI……I WANTED TO INVITE YOU TO JOIN THE GROUP "BOOKS & VIDEOS"…...... THE MISSION OF THE GROUP IS; TO, “EXPLORE THE COMPLEXITY OF JAZZ & BLUES; MUSICALLY,HISTORICALLY,SOCIALLY & THEORETICALLY. BROADENING BETTER UNDERSTANDIG AND GREATER ENJOYMENT!!
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jay
A group of musicians, singers, entertainers, managers, promoters, agents and people with a general interest in the field of music, song, entertainment and the establishment of an co-operative platform for anyone to join at a later stage including a full internet portal with information and PR to the benefit of all parties.
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Visit European Music and Song Concepts for Professionals
I finally managed to get some cuts posted up on this TGJN, hope you like what you hear. My daughter also has two of her's there will be more to come. Thanks for the contact...glad to be your friend too.
"Laura" sound soooo cool!
Thx. for request.
It's an honour to be added as your friend.
Stay in touch,
Manuela
Will be over for about 3 weeks from 27h November - 18th December MA,NJ,IL,FL mainly and Daytona Beach as part of a show called That's Amore I will send you a tour list soon. I received a DVD from Nante finally with some of my clips on, the sound is missing on the left channel, but never the less it took some time but I have a short copy, how about you? I miss you guys too and can't wait to catch up love to Matt & Angela.
Colin
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