Milford Graves

From Infogalactic: the planetary knowledge core
Jump to: navigation, search
Milford Graves
300x200px
Background information
Born (1941-08-20) 20 August 1941 (age 82)
Jamaica, Queens, New York, United States
Genres Jazz, free jazz, avant-garde jazz, world music
Occupation(s) musician, herbalist, acupuncturist, college professor
Instruments Drums, percussion, timbales, conga drums, vocals,
Labels ESP, Prestige, Fontana, RCA, Tzadik
Associated acts Albert Ayler, New York Art Quartet, Paul Bley, Don Pullen
Website milfordgraves.com

Milford Graves (born August 20, 1941 in Queens, New York)[1] is an American jazz drummer and percussionist, most noteworthy for his early avant-garde contributions in the early 1960s with Paul Bley and the New York Art Quartet alongside John Tchicai, Roswell Rudd, and Reggie Workman. He is considered to be a free jazz pioneer, liberating the percussion from its timekeeping role. In fact, many of his music contemporaries, musician inspirees, and fans world-wide would argue that Graves is perhaps the most influential known musician in the development and continuing evolution of free-jazz/avant-garde music, to date. Milford Graves taught at Bennington College, in Bennington, Vermont, being a tenured professor from 1973 to 2011; in 2011, he is awarded Emeritus status. [2]

Initially playing timbales as a kid growing up in Queens, Graves has worked as a sideman and session musician with a variety of jazz musicians throughout his career, including Pharoah Sanders, Rashied Ali, Albert Ayler, Don Pullen, Kenny Clarke, Don Moye, Andrew Cyrille, Philly Joe Jones, Eddie Gómez, and John Zorn. [1] He has invested his time in research within the field of healing through music.[3]

In 2013, Milford Graves along with Drs.Carlo Tremolada and Carlo Ventura received a patent for the an invention that relates to a process of preparing a non-expanded tissue derivative, that is not subjected to cell proliferation in vitro, which has a vascular-stromal fraction enriched in stem and multipotent elements, such as pericytes and/or mesenchymal stem cells, or for preparing non-embryonic stem cells obtained from a tissue sample or from such tissue derivative, wherein the tissue derivative or such cells are subjected to vibrations derived from a heart sound to control the degree of differentiation or possible differentiation of the stem and multipotent elements into several other types of cells and optimize their potency. The invention relates also to a device for carrying out the process, to stem cells obtainable by the process as well as a drug for the regeneration of an animal tissue.

Discography

As leader

  • 1965: Percussion Ensemble (ESP)
  • 1977: Meditation Among Us (Kitty)
  • 1977: Babi (IPS)
  • 1998: Grand Unification (Tzadik)
  • 2000: Stories' (Tzadik)

As sideman

with Montego Joe

  • Arriba! (Prestige)
  • Wild & Warm (Prestige)

With Giuseppi Logan

  • Giuseppi Logan Quartet (ESP)
  • More Giuseppi Logan (ESP)

With Paul Bley

With New York Art Quartet

  • New York Art Quartet (ESP)
  • Mohawk (Fontana)
  • 35th Reunion (DIW)

With the Jazz Composer's Orchestra

  • Communication (Fontana)

With Miriam Makeba

  • Makeba Sings! (RCA)

With Lowell Davidson

  • The Lowell Davidson Trio (ESP)

With Don Pullen

  • At Yale University (PG)
  • Nommo (SRP)

With Albert Ayler

With Sonny Sharrock

With Andrew Cyrille

  • Dialogue of the Drums (IPS)

With Various Artists

  • New American Music Volume 1: New York Section / Composers of the 1970's (Folkways)

With Sun Ra

  • Untitled Recordings (Transparency)

With Kenny Clarke/Andrew Cyrille/Famoudou Don Moye

With David Murray

With John Zorn

With Anthony Braxton & William Parker

References

  1. 1.0 1.1 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  2. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  3. Corey Kilgannon, "Finding Healing Music in the Heart", New York Times, November 9, 2004 Retrieved November 20, 2004

External links