David Amram
David Werner " Dave" Amram ( born November 17, 1930 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) is an American jazz musician ( horn ) and composer.
Life and work
Amram, who is a cousin of Otto Klemperer, first played the piano and trumpet, but moved as a teenager, when the family moved to Washington DC moved, on the French horn. Until 1948 he attended the Oberlin College Conservatory in order to subsequently study at George Washington University. During his studies, he played as a horn player in the National Symphony Orchestra. From 1953 he was with the 7 U.S. Army Symphony in Europe, where he remained after his military service in order to play in Frankfurt with Attila Zoller, Jutta Hipp and Albert Mangelsdorff and take in Paris with Bobby Jaspar, Henri Renaud and Lionel Hampton. Back in the U.S. he has performed with Charles Mingus, Oscar Pettiford, Sonny Rollins and Thelonious Monk. Between 1956 and 1960 he led his own jazz combo, which occurred with the Beat poet Jack Kerouac in 1957. In 1977 he was one of the jazz musicians who, despite the intervention of the U.S. State Department appeared as Dizzy Gillespie, Earl Hines and Stan Getz in Havana. Albums such as " Havana / New York " ( 1977) and " Latin Jazz Celebration" (1983 ) show his interest in the meeting of American and Cuban musicians such as Paquito D' Rivera.
Since 1960, he focused on the activity as a composer. For the Theatre at Lincoln Center, he wrote the mid-1960s incidental music; In 1967, he was assistant to Leonard Bernstein. In his compositions he used jazz material in symphonic works, but also enriches jazz compositions with elements of other musical cultures. He wrote film scores, but also a flute concerto for James Galway. His opera The Final Ingredient was sent in 1965 in a television show and released in 1996 on CD. At the Democratic convention in 2008, he served as Composer-in- Residence.
Furthermore, Amram playing with his jazz quartet, in which his son Adam is active.
Selection Discography
Swell
- Geza Gabor Simon, Immensely well. Attila Zoller. His life and his art. Budapest 2003. ISBN 9632069285
- Martin Kunzler, Jazz Encyclopedia Vol 1 ISBN 3-499-16512-0