WGRP Records is a jazz record label founded by Dave Grusin and Larry Rosen in 1978. Distributed by Verve Records, GRP was originally known for its digital recordings that focuses on its jazz genre.
WGerald Albright is an American jazz saxophonist.
WPatti Austin is an American R&B, pop, and jazz singer and songwriter.
WDavid Bryan Benoit is an American jazz pianist, composer and producer, based in Los Angeles, California, United States. Benoit has charted over 25 albums since 1980, and has been nominated for three Grammy Awards. He is also music director for the Asia America Symphony Orchestra and the Asia America Youth Orchestra. Furthermore, crediting Vince Guaraldi as an inspiration, Benoit has participated both as performer and music director for the later animated adaptations of the Peanuts comic strip, such as the feature film, The Peanuts Movie, restoring Guaraldi's musical signature to the franchise.
WGeorge Washington Benson is an American guitarist, singer, and songwriter. He began his professional career at the age of 19 as a jazz guitarist.
WAngela Tomasa Bofill is a Cuban-Puerto Rican singer-songwriter. A New York native, Bofill began her professional career in the mid–1970s. Bofill is most known for singles such as, "This Time I'll Be Sweeter", "Angel of the Night", and "I Try". Bofill's career spans over four decades.
WChristopher Stephen Botti is an American trumpeter and composer.
WBrecker Brothers were a jazz fusion music duo consisting of Michael Brecker and Randy Brecker. Michael played saxophone, flute, and EWI, and Randy played trumpet and flugelhorn.
WRobert Broom Jr. is an American jazz guitarist, composer, and educator. He was born and raised in New York City, then moved to Chicago, which has been his home town since 1984. He performs and records with The Bobby Broom Trio and his organ group, The Bobby Broom Organi-Sation. While versed in the traditional jazz idioms, Broom draws from a variety of American music forms, such as funk, soul, R&B, and blues.
WGary Burton is an American jazz vibraphonist, composer, and educator. Burton developed a pianistic style of four-mallet technique as an alternative to the prevailing two-mallet technique. This approach caused him to be heralded as an innovator, and his sound and technique are widely imitated. He is also known for pioneering fusion jazz and popularizing the duet format in jazz, as well as being a major figure in music education from his 30 years at the Berklee College of Music.
WLarry Eugene Carlton is an American guitarist who built his career as a studio musician in the 1970s and 1980s for acts such as Steely Dan and Joni Mitchell. He has participated in thousands of recording sessions, recorded on hundreds of albums in many genres, for television and movies, and on more than 100 gold records. He has been a member of the jazz fusion group the Crusaders, the smooth jazz band Fourplay, and has maintained a long solo career.
WArmando Anthony "Chick" Corea was an American jazz composer, keyboardist, bandleader, and occasional percussionist. His compositions "Spain", "500 Miles High", "La Fiesta", "Armando's Rhumba" and "Windows" are widely considered jazz standards. As a member of Miles Davis's band in the late 1960s, he participated in the birth of jazz fusion. In the 1970s he formed Return to Forever. Along with McCoy Tyner, Herbie Hancock, and Keith Jarrett, Corea is considered one of the foremost jazz pianists of the post-John Coltrane era.
WThe Crusaders were an American jazz group that were successful from the 1960s to the 1990s. The group were known as the Jazz Crusaders from their formation in 1960 until shortening their name in 1971. The Crusaders were comfortable playing a wide assortment of genres, from straight ahead jazz, to urban R&B, to R&B-based jazz, to even blues. The band reached a commercial apex in 1979 with their hit single "Street Life", featuring uncredited lead vocals by Randy Crawford, and their accompanying album of the same name.
WEddie Daniels is an American musician and composer. Although he is best known as a jazz clarinetist, he has also played saxophone and flute as well as classical music on clarinet.
WArthur Stewart Farmer was an American jazz trumpeter and flugelhorn player. He also played flumpet, a trumpet–flugelhorn combination especially designed for him. He and his identical twin brother, double bassist Addison Farmer, started playing professionally while in high school. Art gained greater attention after the release of a recording of his composition "Farmer's Market" in 1952. He subsequently moved from Los Angeles to New York, where he performed and recorded with musicians such as Horace Silver, Sonny Rollins, and Gigi Gryce and became known principally as a bebop player.
WRobert David Grusin is an American composer, arranger, producer, and pianist. He has composed many scores for feature films and television, and has won numerous awards for his soundtrack and record work, including an Academy Award and ten Grammy Awards. He is the co-founder of GRP Records.
WOmar Hakim is an American jazz, jazz fusion and pop music drummer, producer, arranger and composer. He has worked with Weather Report, David Bowie, Foo Fighters, Sting, Madonna, Dire Straits, Journey, Kate Bush, George Benson, Miles Davis, Daft Punk, Mariah Carey, The Pussycat Dolls, David Lee Roth and Celine Dion.
WJay Hoggard is an American jazz vibraphonist.
WGeorge Howard was an American smooth jazz saxophonist.
WAndrew Dewey Kirk was an American jazz saxophonist and tubist who led the Twelve Clouds of Joy, a band popular during the swing era.
WKenneth David Kirkland was an American pianist/keyboardist.
WEarl Klugh is an American acoustic guitarist and composer. He has won one Grammy award and thirteen nominations. Klugh was awarded the “1977” Best Recording Award For Performance and Sound” for his album “Finger Painting” by “Swing Journal” a Japanese jazz magazine.
WLucien Leopold Harrigan, known professionally as Jon Lucien, was a singer from Tortola in the British Virgin Islands. His parents were Eric Lucien Harrigan and Eloise Turnbull Harrigan of Tortolan families. His father was a musician whose main instrument was a three coursed Latin guitar like chordophone known as a Tres.
WEric Marienthal is a Grammy Award-nominated Los Angeles-based contemporary saxophonist best known for his work in the jazz, jazz fusion, smooth jazz, and pop genres.
WChieli Minucci is an American guitarist who co-founded the band Special EFX.
WGerald Joseph Mulligan, also known as Jeru, was an American jazz saxophonist, clarinetist, composer and arranger. Though primarily known as one of the leading jazz baritone saxophonists—playing the instrument with a light and airy tone in the era of cool jazz—Mulligan was also a significant arranger, working with Claude Thornhill, Miles Davis, Stan Kenton, and others. His pianoless quartet of the early 1950s with trumpeter Chet Baker is still regarded as one of the best cool jazz groups. Mulligan was also a skilled pianist and played several other reed instruments. Several of his compositions, such as "Walkin' Shoes" and "Five Brothers", have become standards.
WDanilo Pérez is a Panamanian pianist, composer, educator, and a social activist. His music is a blend of Panamanian roots with elements of Latin American folk music, jazz, European impressionism, African, and other musical heritages that promote music as a multi-dimensional bridge between people. He has released 11 albums as a leader, and appeared on many recordings as a side man, which have earned him critical acclaim, numerous accolades, Grammy Awards wins and nominations. He is a recipient of the United States Artists Fellowship, and the 2009 Smithsonian Legacy Award.
WNelson Rangell is an American smooth jazz musician and composer from Castle Rock, Colorado. Although he is known for his work with the tenor, alto, and soprano saxophone, his primary instrument is the piccolo, which he began playing at the age of 15. He has at times worked with Jimmy Haslip and Russ Ferrante.
WEric Scott Reed is an American jazz pianist and composer. His group Black Note released several albums in the 1990s.
WThe Rippingtons are an American contemporary jazz group, mainly relating to the genres smooth jazz, jazz fusion, jazz pop, and crossover jazz. Formed in 1985 by guitarist and band leader Russ Freeman, their career has spanned more than three decades. With a revolving door of musicians, Freeman has been the only consistent member.
WLee Mack Ritenour is an American jazz guitarist who has been active since the late 1960s.
WLuis Salinas is an Argentine jazz guitarist who plays electric and nylon string guitars. His music includes elements of bossa nova, samba, Afro-Uruguayan candombe, salsa, boleros, and jazz. He blends traditional South American musical forms with improvisational modern jazz.
WJoseph Leslie Sample was an American keyboardist and composer. He was one of the founding members of the Jazz Crusaders, the band which became simply the Crusaders in 1971, and remained a part of the group until its final album in 1991.
WArturo Sandoval is a Cuban-American jazz trumpeter, pianist, and composer. While living in his native Cuba, Sandoval was influenced by jazz musicians Charlie Parker, Clifford Brown, and Dizzy Gillespie. In 1977 he met Gillespie, who became his friend and mentor and helped him defect from Cuba while on tour with the United Nations Orchestra. Sandoval became an American naturalized citizen in 1998. His life was the subject of the film For Love or Country: The Arturo Sandoval Story (2000) starring Andy García.
WDiane Joan Schuur, nicknamed "Deedles", is an American jazz singer and pianist. As of 2015, Schuur had released 23 albums, and had extended her jazz repertoire to include essences of Latin, gospel, pop and country music. Her most successful album is Diane Schuur & the Count Basie Orchestra, which remained number one on the Billboard Jazz Charts for 33 weeks. She won Grammy Awards for best female jazz vocal performance in both 1986 and 1987 and has had three other Grammy nominations.
WThomas Wright Scott is an American saxophonist, composer, and arranger. He was a member of The Blues Brothers and led the jazz fusion group L.A. Express.
WSpyro Gyra is an American jazz fusion band that was formed in Buffalo, New York, in 1974. The band's music combines jazz, R&B, funk, and pop music. The band's name comes from Spirogyra, a genus of green algae which founder Jay Beckenstein had learned about in college.
WGregory Tardy is an American jazz saxophonist, who has released albums for the record labels SteepleChase Records, J Curve Records, and Impulse! Records. As of May 2015 he is teaching at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. He has played with Elvin Jones, Avishai Cohen, Aaron Goldberg, Brad Mehldau, and Joshua Redman, among others.
WBilly Taylor was an American jazz pianist, composer, broadcaster and educator. He was the Robert L. Jones Distinguished Professor of Music at East Carolina University in Greenville, and from 1994 was the artistic director for jazz at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C.
WDavid Peter Valentin was an American Latin jazz flautist.
WDave Weckl is an American jazz fusion drummer and leader of the Dave Weckl Band. He was inducted into the Modern Drummer Hall of Fame in 2000.
WYellowjackets is an American jazz fusion band.
WRachel Carmel Nicolazzo, better known as Rachel Z, and now Rachel Z Hakim, is a jazz and rock pianist and keyboardist. She has recorded 10 solo albums as a jazz musician. Her musical style has been described by The Guardian as: "unlike singer/pianists Diana Krall, Norah Jones or Jamie Cullum, whose keyboard skills are closer to the song-based jazz mainstream, Rachel Z is an improviser whose spontaneous playing is by no means eclipsed by the work of presiding geniuses such as Herbie Hancock and McCoy Tyner".