# Vibraphonist, Composer Jay Hoggard’s music has touched the hearts and souls of listeners around Planet Earth for 40 years: Video

- Link: https://jazzblues.eu/2017/09/24/vibraphonist-composer-jay-hoggards-music-touched-hearts-souls-listeners-around-planet-earth-40-years-video/
- Published: 2017-09-24T09:30:53+01:00
- Author: https://JazzBlues.EU

**24.09. – Happy Birthday !!! Vibraphonist, Composer Jay Hoggard’s music has touched
the hearts and souls of listeners around Planet Earth for 40 years. Jay Hoggard 
has long ranked with the greatest vibraphone innovators. Jay’s music is positive,
spiritual, uplifting, and happy. **

He masterfully draws on traditional and contemporary musical vocabulary to develop
new directions for the vibraphone. Jay seamlessly blends jazz and gospel roots with
African marimba rhythms. His performance repertoire represents the three B’s of 
the jazz tradition (Blues, Bop, Ballads) with original innovations.

Born in Washington, DC, Jay Hoggard was raised in Mt. Vernon, New York in a religious
family.His father was a Bishop in the African Methodist Episcopal Zion denomination.
At age 15, Jay began playing the vibraphone. “One night I had a dream that I was
playing the vibes. I asked my father to rent me a set and from the first moment,
I knew that this was what I was supposed to do.” Jay majored in the renown World
Music program at Wesleyan University . He toured Europe and played at Carnegie Hall
during his freshman year. In his junior year, he traveled to Tanzania to study East
African marimba music. Jay graduated from Wesleyan in 1976 and returned to New York
City in 1977 to be proclaimed a young lion of the vibraphone.

Jay Hoggard has recorded 22 CD’s as a leader and over 50 as a collaborator. His 
newest CD, on the JHVM label, is HARLEM HIEROGLYPHS. This two disc recording features
Gary Bartz saxophones, James Weidman piano,organ, Nat Adderley,Jr piano,organ, Belden
Bullock bass, and Yoron Israel drums. Noted jazz writer Owen McNally recently declared
in his Jazz Corridor column for WNPR.org :

“ Hoggard has created a triumphant jazz album, a dramatic showcase for his diverse
composing skills… While the standards get royal treatment, Hoggard’s originals are
the album’s crown jewels. Among these are the celebratory rent party special, “Harlem
Jazzbirds Swingin’ and Swayin’”; “Sonic Hieroglyphs,” an ode to jazz’s sophisticated
sonic semiotics, signs and symbols expressing the sweet and bittersweet mysteries
of life, and Disposable Consumption, landscaped with brilliant corners and a mysterious
motif of sharp consciousness morphing in and out of an edgy, subconscious dream 
state… Throughout, there’s the underlying theme of the hieroglyphs of jazz, the 
music’s uniquely creative, emblematic lexicon, alive with nuance and layers of symbolic
meaning. Hoggard’s striking gallery of sonic portraits reflects many inspirations,
both artistic and personal, that nourish his imagination…Harlem Hieroglyphs is alive
with open-ended potential, perhaps even as the foreshadowing of a historical and
culturally-oriented musical theater work graced with evocative narrative pieces 
resonating with cultural relevance. Or the album could be the gateway to programmatic
tonal suites as painterly as the works by such great African-American artists as
Jacob Lawrence, a master chronicler of the African- American experience, including
his celebrated Migration Series. … Part of what fuels Hoggard’s soaring, imaginative
flights are his passion for jazz in all its historic and cultural breadth and depth,
and his fascination with the legacy of Harlem’s Golden Age, its rich, vibrant social
and cultural life from sacred churches to secular shrines for jazz…Along with a 
host of aesthetic, intellectual and psychological inspirations resides his deep-
seated sense of family, pride in its roots and history. Moved by spirituality, scholarly
intensity and uncompromising integrity, the composer/savant is on a mission to use
his artistic gifts to spread the good word about the power and the glory of jazz’s
hieroglyphs, those myriad, mysterious, sub rosa, miraculously redemptive messages
that have left a profoundly expressive, ineffable yet indelible mark on America’s
creative consciousness.”

Jay Hoggard’s other recordings on the JHVM label, THE RIGHT PLACE, SONGS OF SPIRITUAL
LOVE, SWING ‘EM GATES, SOULAR POWER, CHRISTMAS VIBES ALL THRU THE YEAR, and SOLO
FROM TWO SIDES, give listeners an opportunity to experience the many sides of this
significant and vital musician.

About CHRISTMAS VIBES ALL THRU THE YEAR, Jay says “This recording is about the joy,
peace, love, and happiness that should traverse the world during the holiday seasons
and throughout the whole year. I am a Christian, and this recording is about the
reason for the Christmas season: the observance and re-enactment of the circumstances
of the birth of Jesus. But this music is also an offering to human beings of all
faiths and non- faiths, of the beautiful sounds of which I am blessed to be one 
of many, many channeling spirits.” This trio recording features James Weidman on
organ and piano and Bruce Cox on the drums.

SOLO FROM TWO SIDES is a beautiful program of 13 Jay Hoggard compositions performed
by the composer on both vibraphone and marimba, by way of digital overdubbing. SOULAR
POWER, released Fall 08, is an exquisite set of eleven Jay Hoggard compositions 
and one jazz standard. As Hoggard says, “this CD has the feel of a live performance
with the benefit of studio quality sound. New tunes are combined with others that
have evolved in performance over the years. I am about music that is both aesthetically
pleasing for your mind and spirit, and physically healing for your body and soul.
The power of soul is a mystical paradigm of consciousness transformation .”

SOULAR POWER swings with great sonic balance among its instruments and artists. 
Pianist/ organist James Weidman, bassist Belden Bullock, and drummer Yoron Israel
have performed and recorded as an ensemble with Jay for more than fifteen years.
Their performances here are of a caliber that can only be delivered by long associated,
empathetic collaborators.

SWING ‘EM GATES, is a tribute to the late vibraphone grand master Lionel Hampton.“
Eight of the compositions on this recording are tunes that I played when Lionel 
Hampton sent me to sub for him with his band in the 1990’s…Once, when Hamp called
me to play for him, I asked what tunes he wanted. He replied, ’Just swing ‘em,gates.’”
That conversation was the inspiration for Jays’ composition of the same name as 
well as the direction of this musical tribute to Hampton in Hoggard’s musical voice
The recording features stellar performances by top New York collaborators with a
guest appearance by piano master, Dr. Billy Taylor on three tunes.

Jay Hoggard has been honored and commissioned as a composer in various contexts.
In 2016 he premiered STORIED PLACES, a dance/word/music piece in collaborations 
with choreographer Nicole Stanton and writer Lois Brown. In 2009, he was commissioned
by dance troupe Sankofa Kuumba and the Hartford Symphony Orchestra to write THE 
OTHER SIDE OF THE OCEAN and LET ME MAKE IT CLEAR. Previously, Jay collaborated with
choreographer Cleo Parker Robinson by composing THE WISDOM OF THE BAOBAB TREE commissioned
by Lincoln Center Out of Doors. He was commissioned by the Hartford Festival of 
Jazz to compose LA TIERRA HERMOSA, dedicated to Tito Puente. He was commissioned
by Wesleyan University to compose JOYFUL SWAMP and CROSSING POINT for Max Roach 
and percussion ensemble, and VIBARIMBALA for symphonic and jazz orchestras.

As a performer, Jay Hoggard has toured the globe to rave reviews. He has performed
in many of the finest venues of music presentation throughout the United States ,
Africa Europe, South America, the Caribbean, and Asia. Jay has performed in major
venues (Kennedy Center, Lincoln Center, Schomberg Center) jazz festivals (St. Lucia.
JVC, Montreux, Mt.Fuji, Pori, Hartford), colleges, universities, churches, galleries,
libraries, and clubs around the globe. Jay has been featured on radio (NPR, Pacifica)
and television (ABC Times Square, CBS Sunday Morning, BETJazz) nationally and internationally.
He led a quintet on an extensive tour sponsored by the United States government 
to North Africa, the Middle East and India. Jay performed in special concert collaborations
with vibraphone masters Lionel Hampton, Milt Jackson, Tito Puente and Bobby Hutcherson.
He has recorded and toured with creative artists such as Kenny Burrell, Dr. Billy
Taylor, Max Roach, James Newton, Hilton Ruiz, Oliver Lake, Bennie Maupin, Sam Rivers,
Anthony Braxton, Jorge Dalto, Terumasa Hino, Dwight Andrews, Geri Allen, Anthony
Davis, Henry Threadgill, Vishnu Wood, Chico Freeman, Muhal Richard Abrams , Sherry
Winston, Ahmed Abdullah, and was a guest artist with the Dizzy Gillespie Big Band.
Jay has accompanied singers, instrumentalists, and poets and has performed with 
gospel, theater, dance, percussion, and orchestral ensembles.

Jay Hoggard is a tenured Full Professor of Music at his alma mater, Wesleyan University.
For over 25 years, he has been the director of the Wesleyan Jazz Orchestra and has
taught and mentored hundreds of students.

##### Gear

Musser Vibraphones and Marimbas Mike Balter Mallets.

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