Jazz legend George Shearing is dead at 91 - Monsters and Critics

Cover of George ShearingJazz legend George Shearing is dead at 91 - Monsters and Critics

New York - The blind British jazz pianist and composer Sir George Shearing, most famous for his Lullaby of Birdland, died Monday at age 91.

His manager Dale Sheets said the cause of death was congestive heart failure. He died in Manhattan.

Shearing, whose parents were a coal worker and cleaning lady, moved to the US in 1947 after his first successes in Britain. Two years later he had an international hit with 'September in the Rain.'

His fame grew with his Lullaby of Birdland in 1952, later recorded by music greats like Ella Fitzgerald and Bill Haley and His Comets. His group, the George Shearing Quintet, performed for nearly 30 years before disbanding in the late 1970s.

Shearing performed at the White House for three presidents and for the British royal family. In 2007, Queen Elizabeth II knighted him.

'I dont know why I'm getting this honor,' the New York Times quoted him as saying after learning of his knighthood. 'I've just been doing what I love to do.'

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‘Ella’ comes to life in Long Wharf’s musical opener - The Middletown Press : Serving Middletown, CT

Image via Wikipedia‘Ella’ comes to life in Long Wharf’s musical opener - The Middletown Press : Serving Middletown, CT

NEW HAVEN — When Tina Fabrique takes to the stage to play the jazz great Ella Fitzgerald, she re-creates Ella’s famous scat singing as though she’s singing sacred music.

Because those seemingly casual trills and dips and improvisational “beepity bops” were Ella’s trademark, Fabrique has learned them note for note — and when she delivers them to the breathless audience, it’s as though she’s channeling America’s “first lady of song” herself.

Fabrique has been touring the country for the last five years starring in the Rob Ruggiero-directed “Ella The Musical,” an upbeat, joyful extravaganza, written by Jeffrey Hatcher, that opens the Long Wharf Theatre season Wednesday and runs through Oct. 17. It features more than two dozen of Ella’s hit songs, while exploring the legend surrounding one of the greatest jazz singers of the 20th century. George Caldwell is the musical director and pianist.

For Fabrique, the chance to play Ella Fitzgerald was a perfect fit. Already a jazz singer in her own right, Fabrique had sung as a soloist with the Duke Ellington Orchestra and had appeared in several Broadway productions, including “Ragtime,” and “Bring in ’Da Noise, Bring in ’Da Funk,” and had done regional theater as well as several national tours.

When she auditioned for the part of Ella, she was considered by all who knew her to be perfect for the part. Not only did she look a bit like Ella (they share a similar facial structure), but she also knew plenty about the singer’s style.

“I was already a natural jazz singer, but my sound was more like Sarah Vaughan,” she says. “Although both women were like horns, Sarah was more like a saxophone and Ella was more like a trumpet,” she says. “A trumpet does quick, high notes and the sax does more slurred, meaty middle-voice notes. What I had to do was to connect the two and meet in the middle and become a reflection of Ella’s spirit, not an imitation of her.”

When she got the part, she says, she felt it was important to approach it as an actress rather than just as a singer. “The singing went without saying,” she says, “but I wanted to find the true person underneath. People started sending me packages of CDs and tapes of her. I watched everything I could find, about her talking about her career and about her life, and I built on that.”

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Martin Drew, British Jazz Drummer, Dies at 66 - Obituary (Obit) - NYTimes.com

Martin Drew, British Jazz Drummer, Dies at 66 - Obituary (Obit) - NYTimes.com

Martin Drew, a British jazz drummer who was a member of the pianist Oscar Peterson’s internationally popular group for three decades, died on July 29 in London. He was 66.

The cause was a heart attack, his wife, Tessa, said.

Mr. Drew first worked with Peterson in 1974 at the celebrated London nightclub Ronnie Scott’s, where Mr. Drew was the house drummer. In that role he also accompanied Ella Fitzgerald, Dizzy Gillespie and many other visiting American jazz artists.

He performed all over the world with Peterson from the mid-1970s until a few years before Peterson’s death in 2007. For most of that time the group also included the Danish bass virtuoso Niels-Henning Orsted Pedersen, who died in 2005.

Two other prominent former Peterson sidemen have died this year: the drummer Ed Thigpen in January and the guitarist Herb Ellis in March.

Born in Northampton, England, on Feb. 11, 1944, Mr. Drew made his professional debut at 13 and worked with various British jazz musicians before beginning a long association with the saxophonist Ronnie Scott, as the drummer both in his small groups and at the nightclub he ran.

In addition to his wife, he is survived by a son, Jason; two daughters, Danielle and Michelle; and three granddaughters.

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