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David Baker

David Baker is an NEA Jazz Master

David Nathaniel Baker, Jr. was born December 21, 1931 in Indianapolis, Indiana. He is Distinguished Professor of Music and Chairman of the Jazz Department at the Indiana University School of Music in Bloomington, Indiana. A virtuoso performer on multiple instruments and top in his field in several disciplines, Mr. Baker has taught and performed throughout the USA, Canada, Europe, Scandinavia, Australia, New Zealand and Japan. He is also the conductor and musical & artistic director of the Smithsonian Jazz Masterworks Orchestra.

Mr. Baker received both bachelor's and master's degrees in music education from Indiana University and has studied with a wide range of master teachers, performers and composers including J.J. Johnson, Bobby Brookmeyer, Janos Starker, George Russell, William Russo, Bernard Heiden, and Gunther Schuller, among others. A 1973 Pulitzer Prize nominee, Mr. Baker was nominated for a Grammy Award in 1979, and has been honored three times by Down Beat magazine — as a trombonist, for lifetime achievement, and as the third inductee to their Jazz Education Hall of Fame.

Mr. Baker has received numerous awards, including the National Association of Jazz Educators Hall of Fame Award (1981), President's Award for Distinguished Teaching from Indiana University (1986), the Arts Midwest Jazz Masters Award (1990), the Governor's Arts Award of the State of Indiana (1991), the Indiana Historical Society’s Living Legend Award (2001), the James Smithson Medal from the Smithsonian Institution (2002), the American Jazz Masters Award from the National Endowment for the Arts (2000), and an Emmy Award (2003) for his musical score for the PBS documentary For Gold and Glory. He has received honorary doctorates from Wabash College, Oberlin College, and the New England Conservatory of Music. In 2007 he will be honored by The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts with their Living Jazz Legend Award.

As a composer Mr. Baker has been commissioned by more than 500 individuals and ensembles, including Josef Gingold, Ruggerio Ricci, Janos Starker, Harvey Phillips, the New York Philharmonic, the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, the Beaux Arts Trio, the Fisk Jubilee Singers, the Louisville Symphony, the Ohio Chamber Orchestra, the Audubon String Quartet, the International Horn Society, the Indianapolis Symphony, the Chicago Sinfonietta, and the Plymouth Music Series. His compositions total more than 2,000 in number, including jazz and symphonic works, chamber music, and ballet and film scores.

Mr. Baker's service in music organizations is wide-ranging and includes membership on the National Council on the Arts; board positions for the American Symphony Orchestra League, Arts Midwest, and the Afro-American Bicentennial Hall of Fame/Museum; and past chairs of the Jazz Advisory Panel to the Kennedy Center and the Jazz/Folk/Ethnic Panel of the National Endowment for the Arts.

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Album Review

George Russell: Ezz​-​thetics & The Stratus Seekers revisited

Read "Ezz​-​thetics & The Stratus Seekers revisited" reviewed by Maurizio Comandini


George Russell è uno dei pilastri sui quali si è costruito il jazz moderno degli ultimi 70 anni. Forse non è uno dei primi nomi che ci vengono in mente, ma di sicuro il suo contributo come compositore, come band leader, come musicologo, è fondamentale. Nei primi anni sessanta i suoi album fornirono una interessante variante al free jazz 'classico' che abitualmente associamo ad Ornette Coleman, ad Albert Ayler, a Cecil Taylor e a tanti altri. Russell preferiva ...

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Album Review

Bobby Wiens: Talking Drums

Read "Talking Drums" reviewed by Jack Bowers


If drums could talk, Bobby Wiens' kit would no doubt have some nice things to say about how he enlivened and supported his teammates on this tasteful quintet date that was recorded in July 2020, with masks and social distancing, at the UNC Studios in Greeley, CO. Apparently, the quintet were then students at the University of Northern Colorado; if true, they learned their lessons well and were more than ready to test how readily that knowledge might harmonize in ...

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Album Review

David Ake: Bridges

Read "Bridges" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky


Experimentalist composer Gavin Bryars once proclaimed that “music history has flowed under the bridges for many years." That particular quote adorns the inside flap of pianist David Ake's Bridges which, like Bryars' statement itself, contains many a mystery about music, bridges and history. The pieces that Ake presents herein are modernistic, wide-ranging and wholly original. Melodic stability and consonance come in unlikely form and cacophony liberally colors the water that Ake swims in, yet the water feels just right. While ...

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Book Excerpts

David Baker: A Legacy in Music

Read "David Baker: A Legacy in Music" reviewed by Monika Herzig


This article appears in Chapter 2 “A Star is Born" of David Baker: A Legacy in Music by Monika Herzig (Indiana Univ. Press, 2011). The George Russell Sextet Born in Cincinnati, Ohio, on June 23, 1923, George Russell started out as a drummer and soon entered the New York jazz scene.32 Bouts of tuberculosis kept him for extended periods in hospitals, where he developed much of the framework for his Lydian Chromatic Concept. The 1953 pamphlet ...

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Obituary

David Baker, 1931-2016

David Baker, 1931-2016

Source: Rifftides by Doug Ramsey

I am sad to learn of the death yesterday at 84 of the trombonist, cellist, composer and music educator David Baker. Baker founded Indiana University’s Jazz Studies program and taught at IU for decades. Dozens of his students went on to distinguished jazz careers. He was a trombonist with the Stan Kenton, Maynard Ferguson and Quincy Jones bands and then with George Russell’s quintet. Baker had to give up the instrument after his jaw was injured in a car crash. ...

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Interview

A Conversation with NEA Jazz Master David Baker

A Conversation with NEA Jazz Master David Baker

Source: The Independent Ear by Willard Jenkins

David Baker on the cello, which became his second instrument after an accident ended his trombone days. When friend and Jazz Education Network board colleague (and fine keyboardist in her own right) Monika Herzig—a proud Indiana University grad and student of National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master David Baker—asked me to contribute a chapter to the book she was editing on David’s rich career and life, I was honored. That ask also took me back to when I first ...

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Education

Survey On Jazz Jam Sessions - Research Study By David Baker And Monika Herzig

Survey On Jazz Jam Sessions - Research Study By David Baker And Monika Herzig

Source: Monika Herzig

Dear Jazz student/performer/educator: You are invited to participate in a research study about the role of the Jazz Jam Sessions as a learning tool for jazz musicians. If you are a possible subject because you perform or teach jazz on any level please take this survey. Completing the survey should take no longer than 10 minutes. This is phase 2 of a preliminary study conducted in 2008 and your response is much appreciated even if you participated in the preliminary ...

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Book / Magazine

New Book Chronicles the Life and Times of NEA Jazz Master David Baker

New Book Chronicles the Life and Times of NEA Jazz Master David Baker

Source: The Independent Ear by Willard Jenkins

BLOOMINGTON, Ind.—David Baker has received just about every honor imaginable in his 60-year career as a jazz musician and educator. The Distinguished Professor at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music has recorded extensively, been acclaimed for his playing, writing and arranging, and done more than just about anyone to establish and shape college-level teaching of jazz. He has been named a national Living Jazz Legend, an Indiana Living Legend and a NEA Jazz Master. And he is the author ...

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Book / Magazine

"David Baker: A Legacy in Music" By Monika Herzig, with a Foreword by Quincy Jones

"David Baker: A Legacy in Music" By Monika Herzig, with a Foreword by Quincy Jones

Source: Michael Ricci

From Studio to Stage with One of the World's Best-Loved Living Legends in Music BLOOMINGTON, Ind. A Living Legend, musician, educator, and composer David Baker has made a distinctive mark on the world of music in his nearly 60-year career—as performer (chiefly on trombone and cello), educator, composer, and conductor. In this richly illustrated volume accompanied by a full-length CD, with a foreword by Quincy Jones, Monika Herzig explores Baker's artistic legacy, from his days as a jazz musician in ...

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Radio

"The David Baker Songbook"

"The David Baker Songbook"

Source: David Brent Johnson

David Baker is a renowned jazz educator and bandleader who came out of Indianapolis' great Indiana Avenue scene of the mid-20th century, counting among his friends and colleagues Wes Montgomery, J.J. Johnson, and Freddie Hubbard. His jazz resume is studded with notable accomplishments, associations, and awards. He came up as a standout trombonist and switched to cello after a car accident injured his jaw. His Indianapolis hard bop group of the late 1950s became a leading progressive-jazz ensemble under the ...

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Radio

A Freddie Hubbard Tribute with David Baker

A Freddie Hubbard Tribute with David Baker

Source: Night Lights Classic Jazz

Trumpeter Freddie Hubbard, who died on Monday at the age of 70, was one of Indiana's true jazz giants, rubbing historical shoulders with the likes of J.J. Johnson, Wes Montgomery, and Hoagy Carmichael. On Tuesday, December 30, longtime Hubbard friend and musical colleague David Baker stopped by the studio while I was guest-hosting WFIU's Just You and Me and offered some remembrances and reflections during our 90-minute Hubbard tribute. He also brought along a rare live recording of the teenaged ...

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Obituary

David Baker Memorial Service Notice

David Baker Memorial Service Notice

Source: All About Jazz

We are deeply saddened to have to report that the great recording engineer David Baker has passed away. He died peacefully in his sleep after finishing a session in Rochester, New York on July 14, 2004. He was 58.

Mr. Baker is survived by his wife, Kyoko Baker.

A private family funeral will be held in Atlanta on July 24.

A memorial service is being planned for Monday, August 16 to be held in Studio A of Avatar Studios. A ...

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Obituary

David Baker: 1945 - 2004

David Baker: 1945 - 2004

Source: All About Jazz

David Baker, a Grammy Award winning audio engineer and producer of over 2,000 recordings, died peacefully in his sleep on July 14, 2004. He was 58 and lived in Manhattan. Born David Howard Baker on October 12, 1945 in Mt. Vernon, NY, he was the son of the late Harry Alexander Baker and the late Viola Tenore Baker. David Baker's grandfather was a salesman for Columbia Records in the late 1920's. Mr. Baker's father, Harry, established Baker Audio in Atlanta, ...

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Photos

Music

Recordings: As Leader | As Sideperson

Talking Drums

Cellar Records
2020

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Bridges

Posi-Tone Records
2013

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Videos

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