| Show All |
2013 | 2012 | 2011 | 2010 | 2009 | 2008 | 2007 | 2006 | 2005 | 2004 | 2003 | 2002 | 2001 | 2000 |
| Lonnie Liston Smith (2012) | |
|---|---|
| Pianist and Cosmic Music Traveler Lonnie Liston Smith was born and raised in Richmond, Virginia. His father was in the Gospel group the Harmonizing Four, and Lonnie remembers many in that tight musical community coming by the house, including the Soul Stirrers, then featuring a young Sam Cooke.
Lonnie learned piano, tuba and trumpet in high school, and graduated in music from Morgan State University in Baltimore. But even before he graduation, he was gaining some notoriety around Baltimore as a singer and pianist, playing with the likes of Gary Bartz and Grachan Moncur III. In 1963 Lonnie moved to New York City, where he attended the universities of Betty Carter and Art Blakey, and did several recordings with Roland Kirk. Later he recorded with Pharoah Sanders, Gato Barbieri, and Miles Davis—not bad company—and, as a leader himself, with Cosmic Echoes Decades later, those recording came to the attention of modern samplers, who like to get slices of "Space Princess" or "Night Flower". In fact, in 1993, Lonnie teamed rapper Guru for a ground-breaking album called "Jazzmatazz, Vol. 1" Lonnie hadn't recorded much of late, instead spending time touring and doing workshops, but all that changed with the three-keyboard "Soulful Night of Keys" at Yoshi's San Francisco in November 2013 (which was when he took time to visit the desert island). |
| Pick | Artist | Album | Song | Label |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| # 1 | Charlie Parker | Charlie Parker with Strings: The Master Takes | Just Friends | Verve |
| # 2 | Count Basie | April in Paris | April in Paris | Verve |
| # 3 | John Coltrane | Coltrane | Out of This World | Impulse |
| # 4 | John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman | John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman | Autumn Serenade | Impulse |
| # 5 | Miles Davis | 'Round Midnight | All of Me | Columbia |
| # 6 | Betty Carter | Compact Jazz | Tight | Verve |
| # 7 | Pharoah Sanders | The Impulse Story | Astral Traveling | Impulse |
| # 8 | Shirley Horn | You Won't Forget Me | You Won't Forget Me | Verve |
| Book | Hazrat Inayat Khan, "The Mysticism of Sound and Music" | |||
| Luxury Item | "A keyboard, right by the water, hearing the waves crashing, and then see what kind of music would develop" | |||
| Tim Garland
26 Apr Ben Goldberg 01 Mar Lua Hadar 08 Mar | Molly Holm
19 Apr Remy Le Boeuf 15 Mar Stephanie Nakasian 18 Jan | Marlena Shaw
29 Mar Ben Sidran 12 Apr |

