Van Gogh by Numbers

Joseph Paul Locke is a US American jazz vibraphonist, composer, recording artist and educator. Locke was born in Palo Alto, California, but raised in Rochester, New York. A self-taught improviser, he benefited from his early studies in classical percussion and composition at the Eastman School of Music with John Beck, Gordon Stout, Ted Moore and David Mancini. The critical community continually cites Joe Locke for his artistic work. "There... seems little doubt that Locke, with his ability to play cool and funky, heady and relaxed, is set to become the pre-eminent vibraphonist in jazz." Joe has been voted the #1 vibist in DownBeat Magazine's Critic's Poll and Brazil's International Jazz Poll. Locke has recorded 20 CDs as a band leader, including the critically acclaimed "Moment to Moment", a tribute to the music of Henry Mancini. As producer and as a sideman, he appears on more than 65 recordings. As a jazz musician, Locke was precocious, having played with such luminaries as Dizzy Gillespie, Pepper Adams and Mongo Santamaría before he was even out of high school.
more

Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in black communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a... mix of African and European music traditions. Its black African pedigree is evident in its use of blue notes, improvisation, polyrhythms, syncopation and the swung note. From its early development until the present day jazz has also incorporated music from American popular music. As the music has developed and spread around the world it has drawn on many different national, regional and local musical cultures giving rise, since its early 20th century American beginnings, to many distinctive styles: New Orleans jazz dating from the early 1910s, big band swing, Kansas City jazz and Gypsy jazz from the 1930s and 1940s, bebop from the mid-1940s and on down through West Coast jazz, cool jazz, avant-garde jazz, Afro-Cuban jazz, modal jazz, free jazz, Latin jazz in various forms, soul jazz, jazz fusion and jazz rock, smooth jazz, jazz-funk, punk jazz, acid jazz, ethno jazz, jazz rap, cyber jazz, Indo jazz, M-Base, nu jazz, urban jazz and other ways of playing the music. In a 1988 interview, trombonist J.J. Johnson said, "Jazz is restless.
more