# Larry Willis has had an important and distinguished 40-year career in jazz: Video

- Link: https://jazzblues.eu/2017/12/20/larry-willis-has-had-an-important-and-distinguished-40-year-career-in-jazz-video/
- Published: 2017-12-20T00:02:24+01:00
- Author: https://JazzBlues.EU

**20.12. – Happy Birthday !!! Pianist Larry Willis has had an important and distinguished
40-year career in jazz. Since making his recording debut on Jackie McLean’s landmark
1965 album “Right Now!,” the New York-born Willis has played everything from free
jazz to fusion to rock while performing as a valued sideman with such jazz titans
as Dizzy Gillespie, Lee Morgan, Cannonball Adderley, Art Blakey and Woody Shaw.**

Larry was born in 1942 in Manhattan’s Harlem. Surprisingly, he entered music not
as a pianist but as a voice major, first at New York’s High School of Music and 
Art for gifted students, then at the Manhattan School of Music. His senior year 
in high school, at 17, he had his first recording date, a classical gig with the
Music and Arts Choral Ensemble singing a Copland opera conducted by no less then
Leonard Bernstein.

But something even more important than that happened to Larry at the beginning of
that senior year. He started playing the piano no lessons, no teacher, just figuring
it out by himself. By the end of the winter, he was playing his first professional
gigs in a jazz trio with two of his classmates, Al Foster on drums and Eddie Gomez
on bass. No one knew it then, but that little trio was probably the most distinguished
high school jazz group in the country.

Soon after entering the Manhattan School of Music, Larry switched from voice to 
music theory. For one, he was running head-on into the all-too-evident barriers 
facing black musicians in the classical world.

On the positive side, Larry’s interest in jazz was turning into passion. A fellow
student, Hugh Masakela, heard him jamming with Al Foster. Hugh was so impressed 
that he hooked Larry up with John Mehegan, the legendary New York jazz piano teacher.
Those were Larry’s first-ever lessons. By the end of that year at the Manhattan 
School, at age 19, Larry was playing regularly with Jackie McLean, the great alto
saxophone innovator.

This is a remarkable entry into jazz: a kid of 17 decides to play the piano for 
the first time; four months later, he’s playing gigs with a soon-to-be world class
trio. A year and a half after that, he’s making jazz history with the next giant
of the alto after Bird. A year after Larry’s graduation in 1965, Jackie gave him
his first recording date “Right Now,” on Blue Note and on that first date recorded
the first two pieces in a continuing stream of Willis compositions.

Since then, Larry has played on more than 300 records. He’s played or recorded with
almost every great jazz musician of the modern era, stars like Dizzy Gillespie, 
Lee Morgan, Woody Shaw, Hugh Masakela, Cannonball and Nat Adderley, Stan Getz, Art
Blakey, Art Taylor, Clifford Jordan, Carmen McRae, and Shirley Horn. Recent CDs 
include a Larry Willis Quintet and four Larry Willis Trio recordings plus two solo
sessions (labels are Audioquest, Steeplechase, Evidence and Mapleshade).

Larry’s extraordinary versatility as a pianist ranges from rock and pop” he spent
7 years as keyboardist for Blood, Sweat and Tears to African, Brazilian and Afro-
Cuban music. He’s one of the only non-Hispanic players who ever impressed Mario 
Bauza as a Latin pianist.

Another facet of Larry’s genius is his composing and arranging for orchestras and
big bands. He’s always had a very special gift for arranging strings, strings that
form a gorgeous, open framework for jazz improvisation. His first major string works
were symphonic arrangements for a Brooklyn Symphony concert with the Fort Apache
Band in 1994. Since then he’s done gem-like string quartet and quintet arrangements
for three Mapleshade jazz CDs: John Hicks “Trio Plus Strings,” Sunny Sumter’s “Sunny,”
and Monica Worth’s “Never Let Me Go.” Recently, he wrote larger scale arrangements
for albums by Roy Hargrove, Vanessa Rubin and Joe Ford, among others. Larry composed
an orchestral suite in four movements for the Florida Southern College Symphony 
Orchestra and then performed it in concert. He was also featured soloist with an
Italian chamber orchestra, performing his own compositions.

Larry Willis is a three-time Grammy nominee with Fort Apache as well as pianist 
on two of their New York Jazz Critics Award-winning CDs. He’s was also on Roy Hargrove’s
Grammy-winning “Crisol Band” CD and toured for three years with Roy. Currently, 
he is touring actively with his own Trio and Quintet as well as with Fort Apache
from time to time.

Larry Willis released in 2007 his tribute to his mentor Jackie Mclean “Blue Fable,”
on the HighNote label. With his high school buddy Eddie Gomez on bass, his quintet
plays a set of post-bop standards and some original compositions, including an exuberant
version of Thelonious Monk’s “Rhythm-A-Ning,” an introspective performance of Miles
Davis’s “Nardis,” Jackie McLeans’s “Blue Fable,” (title cut) and his own “Prayer
for New Orleans.”

His most recent release is “The Offering.” again on HighNote. This record is reviewed
here at all about jazz by John Barron.

![Image result for Larry Willis](http://media.gettyimages.com/photos/larry-willis-
and-hugh-masekela-perform-on-stage-at-birmingham-town-picture-id450092349?k=6&m=
450092349&s=612x612&w=0&h=uC9laAQ67SjEQkeEA0xZc0lmOVCbyKmtHhZCMmX_cLE=)

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