Pepper Big Band Charts

© Gary Carner. Copyright Protected. All rights reserved.

British arranger Tony Faulkner is writing four big band charts of Pepper Adams tunes: Enchilada Baby, Mary's Blues, Doctor Deep, and A Winters Tale.  Eight other charts (Ephemera, Bossa Nouveau, Reflectory, Rue Serpente, Apothegm, Patrice, Civilization and Its Discontents, and In Love With Night) will be done in advance of my Pepper Adams book tour, starting in August. Vocal arrangements of Ephemera and Civ will also be done.  Contact me if you wish to play this music.

Pre-Ordering Pepper Adams' Joy Road: An Annotated Discography

© Gary Carner. Copyright Protected. All rights reserved.

My book can now be ordered from amazon.com: http://www.amazon.com/Pepper-Adams-Joy-Road-Discography/dp/0810882566/ref=sr_1_5?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1335114523&sr=1-5

Pepper Adams Symposium in Worcester

© Gary Carner. Copyright Protected. All rights reserved.

The Director of Jazz Studies at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Rich Falco, has approved a symposium examining the life, music, and influence of Pepper Adams on Saturday, September 22.  Presenters will be author Gary Carner and saxophonist Gary Smulyan, after which both will be interviewed by WPI professors Falco and Eunmi Shim.  This event will be the first half of the day-long Adams festivities.  That evening the WPI Big Band will play newly written charts by Frank Griffith, Osian Roberts, and Tony Faulkner of Pepper Adams compositions, including two vocal arrangements that will be given their world premiere.

Soka University Program, 19 October 2012

© Gary Carner. Copyright Protected. All rights reserved.

DALE FIELDER TRIBUTE QUINTET

“The Music of Donald Byrd and Pepper Adams”

Soka Performing Art Center, Alisa Viejo, CA October 19, 2012

Dale Fielder-baritone sax / Nolan Shaheed-trumpet /

Jane Getz-piano / Trevor Ware-bass / Don Littleton-drums

Introduction & Remarks by Gary Carner

Part I: The Music of Pepper Adams

1. Dylan’s Delight

2. Patrice (Quartet.)

3. Wives And Lover’s

4. Apothegm (Quartet.)

5. Libeccio

6. Claudette’s Way

7. Ephemera (Quartet.)

8. Excerent

Part II: The Music of the Donald Byrd/Pepper Adams Quintet 1958-1961

1.  Out of This World

2. Jeannine

3. Here Am I

4. Each Time I Think of You

5. Birdhouse

6. Jorgie’s

7. Mr. Lucky

Dale Fielder to Play Soka Performing Arts Center

© Gary Carner. Copyright Protected. All rights reserved.

As part of Pepper Adams Week in Los Angeles, Dale Fielder's Quintet has been invited to perform the compositions of Pepper Adams at the prestigious Soka University's Performing Arts Center in Aliso Viejo on Friday night, October 19, 2012.  This 1,000 seat, LEED certified facility is known and admired for its superb acoustics and in-the-round setting.  During a handful of performances that week at differing venues, Fielder will be the first musician to ever play the entire cycle of all 43 Adams compositions.

Pepper Adams Week in Los Angeles

© Gary Carner. Copyright Protected. All rights reserved.

A multitude of activities will occur in the LA area from Monday, October 15 until Sunday, October 21.  This week-long celebration of Pepper Adams will begin Monday with a press reception and a big band concert of Pepper's music, featuring arrangements by Frank Griffith, Osian Roberts, Tony Faulkner, John Marabuto, and Larry Dickson.  Dale Fielder will be the first musician in history to perform the entire cycle of 43 Adams tunes that week, and baritone saxophonists Adam Schroeder and Gary Smulyan will participate in still other concerts.  Either Thursday or Friday night the California premiere of Bevan Manson's arrangements of Pepper's ballads for baritone, string quartet, and string bass, will take place at the G Spot in Downtown Los Angeles.  Stay tuned for complete festival information.

Dan Morgenstern's Foreword to Pepper Adams' Joy Road

© Gary Carner. Copyright Protected. All rights reserved.

It's indeed an honor for one of the most esteemed jazz historians of the last sixty years to write a foreword to my book.  Thank you, Dan Morgenstern!  


                                                                                                            FOREWORD

    While correct, "Annotated Discography" by no means says all about this fascinating record of a great musician's career and life. For decades, Gary Carner has
devoted himself to tracing every musical step by Pepper Adams, from the very first teenaged endeavor, captured by a recording device, professional or amateur,
issued or not. And he has enhanced the carefully gathered discographical details with additional information, musical, technical and personal, about the performance circumstances, more often than not obtained from participants and observers, as well as from interviews, published and personal, with the man himself.
    Quite a man, too--not only one of the outstanding practitioners of the baritone saxophone, but a brilliant, complicated guy, whom I had the distinct pleasure of knowing.
If there is a subtext here, it would be the fact that Pepper was the only white musician in the "Detroit Invasion" that descended upon the New York jazz scene in the late
1950s, accepted as a "primus inter pares" by his black colleagues--and friends. Early on, you will find an amusing anecdote about Alfred Lion's first reaction to Pepper's
music: the founder of Blue Note Records refused to believe that the player on the demo tape the young baritonist had submitted was not black,  going so far as to calling him a liar. Pepper would of course go on to participate in many a Blue Note session--if Lion ever apologized, we'll never know.
     Good discographies are certainly very useful tools, but it is highly uncommon for a discography, even an annotated one, to also qualify as a good read. But "Pepper Adams'
Joy Road" most definitely is. It brings the man as well as his music to life. Read--and listen--well!

 Dan Morgenstern