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Django was born in a house near New Beckenham Station where a ropy, semitone flat D’Almaine Piano was the most fascinating toy in the house.  Growing up, many family friends and vagrants passed through the home and many were artists or musicians who gave Django music lessons.  A few were unknown to the Bates family,…

Grammy nominated Robert Glasper has long kept one foot planted firmly in jazz and the other in hip-hop and R&B.  He’s worked extensively with Q-Tip, playing keyboards on the rapper’s 2008 album The Renaissance and co-writing the album single “Life Is Better” which featured his label mate Norah Jones.  Glasper also serves as the music…

Grammy Award winner Kurt Elling is among the world’s foremost jazz vocalists.  He has won every DownBeat Critics Poll for the last thirteen years and has been named “Male Singer of the Year” by the Jazz Journalists Association eight times in that same span.  Every one of Elling’s nine albums has been nominated for a…

New York born Theodore Walter “Sonny” Rollins has had a big reputation from the start.  With influences like Coleman Hawkins, Fats Waller and Louis Armstrong, Sonny started playing the saxophone at a young age.  In the early fifties, he established a reputation first among musicians, then the public, as the most brash and creative young…