Here is an eclectic selection of jazz musicians, born in November, prepared by Louise Levy and Phillip Cant
Antonio Sanchez
1 November, 1971
Antonio Sanchez is a Mexican-American jazz drummer and composer best known for his work with jazz guitarist Pat Metheny. In 2014, his popularity increased when he composed an original film score for Birdman, directed by Alejandro G. Iñárritu. The soundtrack album was released on October 14, 2014. The score earned him a nomination for the Golden Globe Award for Best Original Score and BAFTA Award for Best Film Music; he won the Critics’ Choice Movie Award for Best Score and Satellite Award for Best Original Score.
Kurt Elling
2 November, 1967
“Part of my joy as a singer is to give gifts to people, and one way I try to connect to them is to add something in French or German or whatever.”
Kurt Elling is an American jazz singer and songwriter born in Chicago, Illinois. After college, he enrolled in the University of Chicago Divinity School, but he left one credit short of a degree to pursue a career as a jazz vocalist. Elling began to perform around Chicago, scat singing and improvising his lyrics. He recorded a demo in the early 1990s and was signed by Blue Note. He has been nominated for ten Grammy Awards, winning Best Vocal Jazz Album for Dedicated to You (2009).
Jane Monheit
3 November, 1977
Jane Monheit is an American jazz and pop vocalist. When she was 22, she released her first album, Never Never Land (N-Coded, 2000). Like Fitzgerald, she recorded many songs from the Great American Songbook. After recording for five labels, she started her own, Emerald City Records. Its first release was The Songbook Sessions (2016), an homage to Fitzgerald. Monheit’s vocals were featured in the 2010 film Never Let Me Go for the titular song, written by Luther Dixon, and credited to the fictional Judy Bridgewater.
Jeremy Pelt
4 November, 1976
“My mother used to play jazz around the house all the time, though the recordings were all singers. It wasn’t until I got to 10th grade, that my music teacher in Jazz band hipped me to a lot of musicians like Miles Davis”
Jeremy Pelt is an American jazz trumpeter. Pelt studied classical trumpet as a child and focused on jazz after playing in a high school jazz ensemble. He studied at Berklee College of Music. Among those he has performed with are Ravi Coltrane, Roy Hargrove, Greg Osby, and Cassandra Wilson.
Neil Cowley
5 November, 1972
“I joined a pub blues band when I was 14, and from that point I wanted to do it for a living – it was sexy, you got into pubs underage and girls loved you. From the blues band I was introduced to contemporary black American music and discovered funk, soul, R&B and all that stuff.”
Neil Cowley is an English jazz pianist and composer. He has also released music as part of Fragile State, the Green Nuns of the Revolution, and the Neil Cowley Trio. With his trio, he appeared on Later… with Jools Holland in April 2008 and won the 2007 BBC Jazz Award for best album for Displaced. In 2018, Cowley announced he was working on a new electronic focused solo project.
Arturo Sandoval
6 November, 1949
“To rise above the crowd, you must discipline yourself unceasingly to the strict demand and realities of your ambition.”
Arturo Sandoval is a Cuban-American jazz trumpeter, pianist, and composer. Sandoval, while living in his native Cuba, was influenced by jazz musicians Charlie Parker, Clifford Brown, and Dizzy Gillespie, finally meeting Gillespie later in 1977. Gillespie became a mentor and colleague, playing with Sandoval in concerts in Europe and Cuba and later featuring him in the United Nations Orchestra. Sandoval defected while touring with Gillespie in 1990, and he became an American naturalized citizen in 1998. His life was the subject of the film For Love or Country: The Arturo Sandoval Story (2000). Sandoval has won ten Grammy Awards and been nominated nineteen times; he has also received six Billboard Awards and one Emmy Award.
David S. Ware
7 November, 1949 – 18 October, 2012
“You need to make the music strong, and the philosophy behind the music has to be solid. What the music exudes, what it emits, has to be very strong. It’s your thinking that brings you things in life. Part of my philosophy to exceed starts right there.”
David S. Ware was an American jazz saxophonist, composer, and bandleader. The David S. Ware Quartet performed across the US and Europe and released a series of increasingly acclaimed albums spanning the 1990s. In 2001, jazz critic Gary Giddins described Ware’s quartet as “the best small band in jazz today”.In 2007, after 17 years together, the quartet was disbanded following the release of the album Renunciation and a final European tour that spring. Ware proceeded to perform concerts and record albums with a series of new group configurations.
Russell Malone
8 November, 1963
“Music, to me, is not math or science. It is a language.”
Russell Malone is an American jazz guitarist. He began working with Jimmy Smith in 1988 and went on to work with Harry Connick, Jr. and Diana Krall throughout the 1990s. He began playing at the age of four with a toy guitar his mother bought him. He was influenced by B.B. King and The Dixie Hummingbirds. A significant experience was when he was twelve and saw George Benson perform on television with Benny Goodman. He is mostly self-taught.
Jesse Davis
9 November, 1965
Jesse Davis is an American jazz saxophonist. Davis began as a student in Ellis Marsalis’s New Orleans Center for Creative Arts. After graduating, Davis embarked on a productive jazz career, recording eight albums on the Concord Jazz label, alongside collaborations with such artists as Jack McDuff and Illinois Jacquet. Davis has studied music at Northeastern Illinois University, and in 1989 he received a “Most Outstanding Musician award” from Down Beat magazine.
Houston Person
10 November, 1934
Houston Person is an American jazz tenor saxophonist and record producer. Although he has performed in the hard bop and swing genres, he is most experienced in and best known for his work in soul jazz. He received the Eubie Blake Jazz Award in 1982. Person grew up in Florence, South Carolina, and first played piano before switching to tenor saxophone. He studied at South Carolina State College where he was inducted into the school’s Hall of Fame in 1999.
Mario Pavone
11 November, 1940
Mario Pavone is an American jazz bassist. He grew up in Waterbury, Connecticut and began performing in 1965. He was a member of Paul Bley’s trio during 1968-72, and Bill Dixon’s trio during the 1980s. He also performed with such musicians as Barry Altschul, Wadada Leo Smith, and Gerry Hemingway. Pavone recorded his first album as a leader in 1979, and has since recorded over a dozen albums under his name. Pavone co-led a group with Anthony Braxton in the early 1990s, with Braxton on piano rather than his usual saxophones. In 1980 he began an 18-year musical relationship with saxophonist Thomas Chapin. Along with drummer Michael Sarin, the group recorded seven albums for Knitting Factory Records, which also released an eight-CD box set of these albums plus a live recording following Chapin’s death in 1998.
Charlie Mariano
12 November, 1923 – 16 June, 2009
Charlie Mariano was an American jazz alto saxophonist and soprano saxophonist. After his service in the Army, Mariano attended what was then known as Schillinger House of Music, now Berklee College of Music. He was among the faculty at Berklee from 1965–1971. Mariano moved to Europe in 1971, settling eventually in Köln (Cologne), Germany. He played with one of the Stan Kenton big bands, Toshiko Akiyoshi (his then-wife), Charles Mingus, Eberhard Weber, the United Jazz and Rock Ensemble, Embryo and numerous other notable bands and musicians.
Hampton Hawes
13 November, 1928 – 27 May, 1977
Hampton Hawes was an American jazz pianist. He was the author of the memoir Raise Up Off Me, which won the Deems-Taylor Award for music writing in 1975. Hawes was self-taught; by his teens, he was playing with the leading jazz musicians on the West Coast, including Dexter Gordon, Wardell Gray, Art Pepper, Shorty Rogers, and Teddy Edwards. Hawes’ playing style developed in the early 1950s. He included “figures used by Parker and [Bud] Powell (but he played with a cleaner articulation than Powell), some Oscar Peterson phrases, and later, some Bill Evans phrases and an impressive locked-hands style in which the top notes always sang out clearly.” He also helped develop “the double-note blues figures and rhythmically compelling comping style that Horace Silver and others were to use in the mid-1950s.” His technique featured “great facility with rapid runs and versatile control of touch.
George Cables
14 November, 1944
“Jazz musicians are the only workers who will put in a full shift for pay & then go somewhere else & continue to work for free.”
George Cables is an American jazz pianist and composer. Cables has played with Art Blakey, Sonny Rollins, Dexter Gordon, Art Pepper, Joe Henderson, and many other well-established jazz musicians. His own records include the 1980 Cables’ Vision with Freddie Hubbard among others. From 1983 Cables worked on the project Bebop & Beyond. He left later in the 1980s, but returned for guest appearances on two early 1990s albums, before rejoining in 1998.
Kevin Eubanks
15 November, 1957
Kevin Eubanks is an American jazz and fusion guitarist and composer. He was the leader of The Tonight Show Band with host Jay Leno from 1995 to 2010. He also led the Primetime Band on the short-lived The Jay Leno Show. After Eubanks moved to New York, he began performing with noted jazzmen such as Art Blakey (1980–81), Roy Haynes, Slide Hampton and Sam Rivers. His first recording as a leader, Guitarist, was released on the Elektra label when Eubanks was 25 years old. It led to a seven-album contract with the GRP label and four albums for Blue Note.
Diana Krall
16 November, 1964
“But the greatest thing about music is putting it out there for people to figure out. You want the listener to find the song on their own. If you give too much away, it takes away from the imagination.”
Diana Krall is a Canadian jazz pianist and singer, known for her contralto vocals. She has sold more than 6 million albums in the US and over 15 million albums worldwide. On December 11, 2009, Billboard magazine named her the second Jazz Artist of the Decade (2000–09), establishing her as one of the best-selling artists of her time. Krall is the only jazz singer to have had eight albums debuting at the top of the Billboard Jazz Albums. To date, she has won three Grammy Awards and eight Juno Awards. She has also earned nine gold, three platinum, and seven multi-platinum albums.
Ben Allison
17 November, 1966
Ben Allison is an American double bassist, composer, producer, bandleader, educator. In addition to his work as a performer, he co-founded the non-profit Jazz Composers Collective and served as its Artistic Director for twelve years. Allison is an adjunct professor at New School University and serves on the board of the New York chapter of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, where he serves as President. In 2013, Allison formed his own record label, Sonic Camera Records. His first album on that label, The Stars Look Very Different Today, was released on December 3, 2013.
Don Cherry
18 November, 1936
“Jazz is an art that makes a person completely naked.”
Don Cherry was an American jazz trumpeter. Cherry had a long association with saxophonist Ornette Coleman, which began in the late 1950s. Cherry was also a pioneer in world fusion music in the 1960s and 1970s. Cherry learned to play various brass instruments in high school. Throughout his career, Cherry played pocket cornet (though Cherry identified this as a pocket trumpet), trumpet, cornet, flugelhorn, and bugle.
Tommy Dorsey
19 November, 1905 – 26 November, 1956
“Bebop has set music back twenty years.”
“I wish you wouldn’t make the strings such an important part of your arrangements because frankly they’re only a tax dodge!”
Tommy Dorsey was an American jazz trombonist, composer, conductor and bandleader of the big band era. He was known as the “Sentimental Gentleman of Swing” because of his smooth-toned trombone playing. His theme song was “I’m Getting Sentimental Over You”. His technical skill on the trombone gave him renown among other musicians. He was the younger brother of bandleader Jimmy Dorsey. After Dorsey broke with his brother in the mid-1930s, he led an extremely popular and highly successful band from the late 1930s into the 1950s. He is best remembered for standards such as “Opus One”, “Song of
June Christy
20 November, 1925 – 21 June, 1990
“She was one of those personalities that changes the dynamics of a room just by walking into it.
She exuded class and elegance.” – (nephew) Scott Luster
June Christy (born Shirley Luster) was an American singer, known for her work in the cool jazz genre and for her silky smooth vocals. Her success as a singer began with The Stan Kenton Orchestra. She pursued a solo career from 1954 and is best known for her debut album Something Cool. After her death, she was hailed as “one of the finest and most neglected singers of her time.
Coleman Hawkins
21 November, 1904 – 19 May, 1969
“I honestly can’t characterize my style in words. It seems that whatever comes to me naturally, I play.”
“Some people say there was no jazz tenor before me. All I know is I just had a way of playing and I didn’t think in terms of any other instrument but the tenor.”
“I made the tenor sax – there’s nobody plays like me and I don’t play like anybody else.”
Coleman Hawkins , nicknamed “Hawk” and sometimes “Bean”, was an American jazz tenor saxophonist. One of the first prominent jazz musicians on his instrument, as Joachim E. Berendt explained: “there were some tenor players before him, but the instrument was not an acknowledged jazz horn”. While Hawkins became well known with swing music during the big band era, he had a role in the development of bebop in the 1940s. Fellow saxophonist Lester Young, known as “Pres”, commented in a 1959 interview with The Jazz Review: “As far as I’m concerned, I think Coleman Hawkins was the President first, right? As far as myself, I think I’m the second one.” Miles Davis once said: “When I heard Hawk, I learned to play ballads.”
Hoagy Carmichael
22 November, 1899 – 27 December, 1981
“Ragtime was my lullaby.”
“I don’t think I’ll ever be president of anything.”
“This exploded in me almost more music than I could consume.”
Hoagy Carmichael was an American singer, songwriter, and actor. Carmichael was one of the most successful Tin Pan Alley songwriters of the 1930s and was among the first singer-songwriters in the age of mass media to utilize new communication technologies, such as television and the use of electronic microphones and sound recordings. Carmichael composed several hundred songs, including 50 that achieved hit record status. He is best known for composing the music for “Stardust”, “Georgia on My Mind” (lyrics by Stuart Gorrell), “The Nearness of You”, and “Heart and Soul”. He also collaborated with lyricist Johnny Mercer on “Lazybones” and “Skylark”. Carmichael’s “Ole Buttermilk Sky” was an Academy Award nominee in 1946, from Canyon Passage. “In the Cool, Cool, Cool of the Evening,” with lyrics by Mercer, won the Academy Award for Best Original Song in 1951. Carmichael also appeared as a character actor and musical performer in 14 films, hosted three musical-variety radio programs, performed on
Emil Viklický
23 November, 1948
“When I graduated — this was in 1971 — my professor asked if I wanted to stay at the University. I was kind of rude, like 23-year-olds can be, and said, “No thank you, Professor. I’m going to Prague.” He said, “Are you going to study mathematics there?” I said, “No.” He said, “What are you going to do?” I said, “I’m going to play jazz in Prague”.
Emil Viklický is a Czech jazz pianist and composer. As a student he devoted a lot of time to playing jazz piano, and in 1974, he was awarded the prize for best soloist at the Czechoslovak Amateur Jazz Festival. As a pianist, Viklický has performed in numerous international ensembles alongside musicians from the U.S. and other European countries… As a composer, Viklický has attracted attention abroad primarily for having created a synthesis of the expressive elements of modern jazz with the melodicism and tonalities of Moravian folk song that is distinctly individual in contemporary jazz.
Teddy Wilson
24 November, 1912 – 31 July, 1986
“When you hear a large symphony orchestra. for instance, in a concert hall, there’s a big, sweeping sound that just doesn’t get on to a record.”
“If it’s enough money, I’ll play the North Pole.”
“Within reasonable limits, a professional player should keep busy at music.”
Teddy Wilson was an American jazz pianist. Described by critic Scott Yanow as “the definitive swing pianist”, Wilson’s sophisticated and elegant style was featured on the records of many of the biggest names in jazz, including Louis Armstrong, Lena Horne, Benny Goodman, Billie Holiday, and Ella Fitzgerald. With Goodman, he was one of the first black musicians to appear prominently with white musicians. In addition to his extensive work as a sideman, Wilson also led his own groups and recording sessions from the late 1920s to the 1980s.
Paul Desmond
25 November, 1924 – 30 May, 1977
“Writing is like jazz. It can be learned, but it can’t be taught.”
“The qualities in music which I considered most important – and still do – were beauty, simplicity, originality, discrimination, and sincerity.”
“I think I had it in the back of my mind that I wanted to sound like a dry martini.”
Paul Desmond was an American jazz alto saxophonist and composer, best known for his work with the Dave Brubeck Quartet and for composing that group’s biggest hit, “Take Five”. He was one of the most popular musicians to come out of the cool jazz scene. In addition to his work with Brubeck, he le
Bobby Sharp
26 November, 1924 – 29 January. 2013
“He writes like a gentleman and she sings like a lady.”
“I’ve still got songs here in the piano bench that I forgot I ever wrote. I’ve been sitting at the piano and hitting chords, writing things down lately.”
Bobby Sharp joined the Army in 1943, and after getting out of the service, used the GI bill to study music, first at the Greenwich House Music school (for the fundamentals) and then at the Manhattan School of Music (for harmony, theory, and piano). His impetus for getting serious about learning the craft had come from family friend and famous bandleader Sy Oliver. For the next few years, Bobby ran up and down Broadway and Tin Pan Alley, trying to get songs published. He hung out in bars like Harlem landmark Small’s Paradise, meeting other hungry songwriters. He read books and poems – even the thesaurus – as he put down tune after tune.
Maria Schneider
27 November, 1960
Schneider partially attributes her collaboration with the late David Bowie to her current explorations.
“It was really fun working with him because he was fearless! And I work with fear; I do a lot of second-guessing. My early music contained a lot of darkness, and all of a sudden I was writing about the darkness again. He let out the beast in me.”
Maria Schneider is an American composer and jazz orchestra leader who has won multiple Grammy Awards. She studied music theory and composition at the University of Minnesota, graduating in 1983, then earned a master’s degree in Music in 1985 from the Eastman School of Music, studying for one year as well at the University of Miami. After leaving Eastman, she was hired by Gil Evans as his copyist and assistant. Since 2005, the Maria Schneider Orchestra has performed an annual Thanksgiving week-long gig at the Jazz Standard in New York City. The orchestra has also performed at jazz festivals and concert halls in Europe, South America, and Asia. Schneider has performed with over 80 groups in over 30 countries and has taught at universities worldwide. In 2013, she received an honorary doctorate from the University of Minnesota.
Gigi Gryce
28 November, 1927 – 14 March, 1983
“I’ve always considered Gigi to be right up there with Benny Golson, Horace Silver, Sonny Clark, Elmo Hope, and Tadd Dameron in his ability to construct intriguing and interesting modern Jazz compositions that are fun to listen to and fun to play on.” – Gordon Jack
Gigi Gryce , later Basheer Qusim, was an American jazz saxophonist, flautist, clarinetist, composer, arranger, and educator. While his performing career was relatively short, much of his work as a player, composer, and arranger was quite influential and well-recognized during his time. However, Gryce abruptly ended his jazz career in the 1960s. This, in addition to his nature as a very private person, has resulted in very little knowledge of Gryce today. Several of his compositions have been covered extensively (“Minority”, “Social Call”, “Nica’s Tempo”) and have become minor jazz standards. Gryce’s compositional bent includes harmonic choices similar to those of contemporaries Benny Golson, Tadd Dameron and Horace Silver. Gryce’s playing, arranging, and composing are most associated with the
Billy Strayhorn
29 November, 1915 – 31 May, 1967
“My grandmother played the piano, and I used to toddle over there and pick out little things that sounded good to me.”
“In order to play and write, it’s unique – you either do one or the other.”
Billy Strayhorn was an American jazz composer, pianist, lyricist, and arranger, best remembered for his long-time collaboration with bandleader and composer Duke Ellington that lasted nearly three decades. His compositions include “Take the ‘A’ Train”, “Chelsea Bridge”, “A Flower Is a Lovesome Thing”, and “Lush Life”. In his autobiography and in a spoken word passage in his Second Sacred Concert, Duke Ellington listed what he considered Strayhorn’s “four major moral freedoms”: “freedom from hate, unconditionally; freedom from self-pity (even through all the pain and bad news); freedom from fear of possibly doing something that might possibly help another more than it might himself; and freedom from the kind of pride that might make a man think that he was better than his brother or his neighbor.
Roberta Gambarini
30 November, 1972
“There’s always room for improvisation or changes of expression. We change every minute, never the same. If there’s no room to express the changes there can’t be any truthfulness.”
Roberta Gambarini moved to the U.S. in 1998 and won a scholarship to the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston. A few weeks after her arrival in America, she entered the Thelonious Monk International Jazz Vocals Competition and came in third. She was invited to sing in New York City, where she met Benny Carter and James Moody. Her album “So in Love” was nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Jazz Vocal Album. In 2004, she started touring with the Dizzy Gillespie All Star Big Band, performing with James Moody. From 2006–2007 she toured with her own trio, as well as the Hank Jones trio. Her debut album, “Easy to Love” (Groovin’ High, 2006) was nominated for a Grammy Award. “You Are There” was a collaboration with Hank Jones.