What's Up?
Trumpeter Scotty Barnhart Appointed New Director of The Legendary Count Basie Orchestra
"I take this position very seriously and will do my very best to continue the great legacy for which we are known. Mr. Basie and his musicians set a precedent in Jazz that has been given to us to preserve and protect. I want us to continue to work together to ensure that we are always adhering to the highest standards on and off the bandstand, but I want us to have fun too. I believe that the more serious we are the more fun we can have. Mr. Basie himself said that a happy band is a great band. I want us to leave no doubt after every single tune we play that we are the greatest jazz orchestra on this planet. In every respect. Period.
I want that stage to be on fire when we finish."
Life & Work
Bio:
Scotty Barnhart is an acclaimed jazz trumpeter, leader, composer, arranger, educator, author and now in his twentieth year with the legendary Count Basie Orchestra has been appointed as their new Director.
A Two-time Grammy Award winner with the Basie Orchestra, three critically acclaimed recordings by pianist Marcus Roberts and over ten recordings with the likes of Tony Bennett, Diana Krall, Ray Charles, and Tito Puente, Scotty released his debut solo CD 'Say It Plain' on the Unity Music label. Scotty invited Clark Terry, Ellis and Wynton Marsalis, Marcus Roberts, Jamie Davis and Etienne Charles to share his compositions and love of standards on Con Alma, Giant Steps and Barnhart's own, Dedicated To You. Say It Plain achieved No. 3 in the Jazz Charts and has received celebrated reviews.
Acknowledged as one of the authorities on the history of jazz trumpet, he intently researched and wrote the ground breaking book The World of Jazz Trumpet - A Comprehensive History and Practical Philosophy. Published by Hal Leonard, it is a valuable source tool for jazz trumpeters, students and jazz fans with interviews from Harry 'Sweets' Edison to Chuck Mangione, technical tutorials, historical events and illustrated with unpublished photographs.
When Scotty Barnhart is not touring with The Count Basie Orchestra or teaching at Florida State University, he performs with his own quintet-sextet and lectures and demonstrates at schools, colleges, universities, conferences around the world, spreading jazz music to ensure its future for others to explore and enjoy.
Publications:
The World of Jazz Trumpet: A Comprehensive History and Practical Philosophy
In The World of Jazz Trumpet - A Comprehensive History and Practical Philosophy, acclaimed jazz trumpet soloist Scotty Barnhart examines the political, social and musical conditions that led to the creation of jazz as America's premier art form. He traces the many factors that enabled freed slaves and their descendants to merge the blues, gospel, classical marches, and African rhythms to create a timeless and profound art that, since its inception, circa 1900, continues to have a major impact on all music. The World of Jazz Trumpet is a must-have study of the jazz trumpet for students, instructors, and professional musicians, as well as for anyone who appreciates the genre. Readers will appreciate Barnhart's personal and professional connection to a major part of American and world history. This book fills a major void in the world of jazz education as well as in general music education. With entries on 800 trumpeters, it is destined to become required reading in thousands of colleges, schools and homes around the world.
My Instruction
Lessons/Workshops:
When I am not touring with The Count Basie Orchestra or teaching my students in the Jazz Studies Department at Florida State University, I am delighted to offer online or 'in person' trumpet lessons. Using Skype or iChat, learn the elements of playing your trumpet whether your a beginner or at advanced levels and wherever you are in the world.
The Recôncavo is an almost invisible center-of-gravity. Circumscribing the Bay of All Saints, this region was landing for more enslaved human beings than any other such throughout all of human history. Not unrelated, it is also birthplace of some of the most physically & spiritually uplifting music ever made. —Sparrow
"Dear Sparrow: I am thrilled to receive your email! Thank you for including me in this wonderful matrix."
—Susan Rogers: Personal recording engineer for Prince, inc. "Purple Rain", "Sign o' the Times", "Around the World in a Day"... Director of the Berklee Music Perception and Cognition Laboratory
I'm Pardal here in Brazil (that's "Sparrow" in English). The deep roots of this project are in Manhattan, where Allen Klein (managed the Beatles and The Rolling Stones) called me about royalties for the estate of Sam Cooke... where Jerry Ragovoy (co-wrote Time is On My Side, sung by the Stones; Piece of My Heart, Janis Joplin of course; and Pata Pata, sung by the great Miriam Makeba) called me looking for unpaid royalties... where I did contract and licensing for Carlinhos Brown's participation on Bahia Black with Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock...
...where I rescued unpaid royalties for Aretha Franklin (from Atlantic Records), Barbra Streisand (from CBS Records), Led Zeppelin, Mongo Santamaria, Gilberto Gil, Astrud Gilberto, Airto Moreira, Jim Hall, Wah Wah Watson (Melvin Ragin), Ray Barretto, Philip Glass, Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd for his interest in Bob Marley compositions, Cat Stevens/Yusuf Islam and others...
...where I worked with Earl "Speedo" Carroll of the Cadillacs (who went from doo-wopping as a kid on Harlem streetcorners to top of the charts to working as a janitor at P.S. 87 in Manhattan without ever losing what it was that made him special in the first place), and with Jake and Zeke Carey of The Flamingos (I Only Have Eyes for You)... stuff like that.
Yeah this is Bob's first record contract, made with Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd of Studio One and co-signed by his aunt because he was under 21. I took it to Black Rock to argue with CBS' lawyers about the royalties they didn't want to pay. They paid.
MATRIX MUSICAL
The Matrix was built below among some of the world's most powerfully moving music, some of it made by people barely known beyond village borders. Or in the case of Sodré, his anthem A MASSA — a paean to Brazil's poor ("our pain is the pain of a timid boy, a calf stepped on...") — having blasted from every radio between the Amazon and Brazil's industrial south, before he was silenced. (that's me left, with David Dye & Kim Junod for U.S. National Public Radio) ... The Matrix started with Sodré, with João do Boi, with Roberto Mendes, with Bule Bule, with Roque Ferreira... music rooted in the sugarcane plantations of Bahia. Hence our logo (a cane cutter).