Title: Sangeeta Michael Berardi - 04-10-08
Description: Sangeeta Michael Berardi, guitarist; b. Waterbury, CT, 2 September 1939. He began playing guitar at age ten, and gigging at about 14, but his musical progress was delayed by family troubles in his junior year of high school and he was arrested for armed robbery at 18. While there, he resumed the guitar and on his release in 1960 began gigging at Providence College and elsewhere while attending the University of Connecticut., eventually getting a degree in English. In 1963 he moved to Chicago where he worked with Baby Face Willette and Joe Diorio, with whom he studied informally. In 1964 he was back in Connecticut, where he studied with Bertram Turetzky, then from 1965-8 he led bands in Manhattan with Perry Robinson, Dewey Johnson, and others while studying with Ronnie Ball. In 1968-9 he led groups in Woodstock, New Paltz and Manhattan, and co-led bands with Sonny Simmons and with Sunny Murray. In the spring to fall of 1968 he was the music director at Group 212, a multimedia arts cooperative near Woodstock, bringing Archie Shepp, Murray and many others and paving the way for the Creative Music Studio. He appeared at Manhattan loft festivals (1970-1972) with his own groups and co-led one with Marzette Watts at the East Village Inn, and played in the groups of David Izenson, Roswell Rudd (including a 1971 appearance with the Jazz Composer's Orchestra), and Alice Coltrane. In 1972 he began a weekly concert/workshop series on the SUNY New Paltz campus, later moving to San Francisco where he led bands and performed with Shepp and Pharoah Sanders. From 1975 he became heavily involved with yoga and the music of India. In 1980 he moved back to N.Y. and opened up his 7th Avenue loft as a workshop/performance space featuring Rashied Ali, Sanders, Dave Schnitter, Joe Lovano, and many others until the building closed in 1984. In 1985 he appeared in San Francisco with Shepp, from 1985-1988 was taking a leave from music in Connecticut making prose, poems, and drawings, and from 1988-1993 he was in El Cerrito, Ca., making occasional appearances. Back on the East Coast, a severe back injury curtailed his playing during 1994-1995 but in 1996 he began performing again. He lives in El Cerrito, Ca.

Title: Grant Green - No1 Green Street (♫ )
Description: Grant Green was born in St. Louis on June 6, 1931, learned his instrument in grade school from his guitar-playing father and was playing professionally by the age of thirteen with a gospel group. He worked gigs in his home town and in East St. Louis, IL, until he moved to New York in 1960 at the suggestion of Lou Donaldson. Green told Dan Morgenstern in a Down Beat interview: "The first thing I learned to play was boogie-woogie. Then I had to do a lot of rock & roll. It's all blues, anyhow." His extensive foundation in R&B combined with a mastery of bebop and simplicity that put expressiveness ahead of technical expertise. Green was a superb blues interpreter, and his later material was predominantly blues and R&B, though he was also a wondrous ballad and standards soloist. He was a particular admirer of Charlie Parker, and his phrasing often reflected it. Green played in the '50s with Jimmy Forrest, Harry Edison, and Lou Donaldson. He also collaborated with many organists, among them Brother Jack McDuff, Sam Lazar, Baby Face Willette, Gloria Coleman, Big John Patton, and Larry Young. During the early '60s, both his fluid, tasteful playing in organ/guitar/drum combos and his other dates for Blue Note established Green as a star, though he seldom got the critical respect given other players. He was off the scene for a bit in the mid-'60s, but came back strong in the late '60s and '70s. Green played with Stanley Turrentine, Dave Bailey, Yusef Lateef, Joe Henderson, Hank Mobley, Herbie Hancock, McCoy Tyner, and Elvin Jones. Sadly, drug problems interrupted his career in the '60s, and undoubtedly contributed to the illness he suffered in the late '70s. Green was hospitalized in 1978 and died a year later. Despite some rather uneven LPs near the end of his career, the great body of his work represents marvelous soul-jazz, bebop, and blues. A severely underrated player during his lifetime, Grant Green is one of the great unsung heroes of jazz guitar. Like Stanley Turrentine, he tends to be left out of the books. Although he mentions Charlie Christian and Jimmy Raney as influences, Green always claimed he listened to horn players (Charlie Parker and Miles Davis) and not other guitar players, and it shows. No other player has this kind of single-note linearity (he avoids chordal playing). There is very little of the intellectual element in Green's playing, and his technique is always at the service of his music. And it is music, plain and simple, that makes Green unique. Green's playing is immediately recognizable — perhaps more than any other guitarist. Green has been almost systematically ignored by jazz buffs with a bent to the cool side, and he has only recently begun to be appreciated for his incredible musicality. Perhaps no guitarist has ever handled standards and ballads with the brilliance of Grant Green. LIKE WHAT U HEARD? SUBSCRIBE IF YOU WILL FOR MORE EXCELLENT MUSIC