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MP3 Vern Thompson - Passions Of The Heart
11 MP3 Songs
JAZZ: Traditional Jazz Combo, JAZZ: Latin Jazz
Details:
Vern Thompson was born in Oakland, California on July 29th 1950. He was raised in Berkeley, CA, attending Berkeley High School and graduating in the spring of 1968. Much later Berkeley High would produce musicians Benny Green, Joshua Redmon and Peter Apfelbaum.
"At the time I attended Berkeley High there was very little recognition of jazz in the curriculum , there was only a jazz appreciation course and no jazz band."
In March of 1969 Vern went to work at KJAZ-FM off and on for the next twelve years using the air name Lee Thomas. He also attended San Francisco State University where he studied Broadcast Communications and music. During this time he began private study of the trumpet, starting with John Coppola and continuing to study with Warren Gale Jr., Eddie Henderson, Woody Shaw and Joe Henderson (studying with each for about two years).
"After I received my B.A. from San Francisco State I just continued to study trumpet and kept going with music. I wanted to be a professional musician. I wanted to be one of the best so I studied with those I (and those in the know) considered to be the best. "
However he would much later have to discontinue playing the trumpet because of an ailment called Focal Dystonia, a nerve and muscle disorder that causes a cramping and locking of the fingers. "This pretty much destroyed my technique... all the practicing five and six hours a day went down the tubes. But what I learned about improvisational theory, I was able to use in composition".
At this point he began to write more in order to stay with the music. "Since all I want to do in this music revolves around improvisation, when I write, I write for the improviser. I am specifically interested in writing music to expand the jazz repertoire. This music is, and always has been, about improvisation and no one who really innovated in the area of improvisation did so within a big band or a very large group. This music is about compactness. I feel that I can say all that I want to say with ten or less instruments."
"It''s Thompson''s mature melodies and arrangements that give the musicians the room to create... the musicians move the pieces gracefully into open spaces. The "faster" cuts have a hard-bop feel, with little twists and turns built in to pique the interest of both the musician and listener. Vern Thompson''s music is evocative, often rich with emotion and melody and listeners who like Jazz that moves through the mainstream with the ability to surprise should check this out."
- Richard B. Kamins
Cadence (The review of Jazz and Blues: Creative Improvised Music)
Vol. 23 No.4 April 1997__________________
".....A set of impressive songs....Good new players are rare but hotshot composers like Thompson are ten times less likely to surface."
- Dave McElfresh
Jazz Now Magazine
March 1997 ______________________
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