Cameron Brown and Dannie’s Calypso
Bassist, composer, and educator Cameron Brown has been a driving force in jazz for over five decades, performing with legends including George Russell, Don Cherry, Archie Shepp, Sheila Jordan, and the Don Pullen/George Adams Quartet with Dannie Richmond. With his ensemble Cameron Brown and Dannie’s Calypso, he honors Richmond’s legacy while blending hard-swinging jazz with the joyful rhythms of calypso for an evening of vibrant, infectious music.
Cameron's 80th Birthday Celebration!
Bassist, composer and educator Cameron Brown began his career in the mid-sixties, recording in Europe with George Russell and Don Cherry. These important innovators remain life-long inspirations and influences.
Beginning in 1975, Mr. Brown anchored some of the most important ensembles of the seventies, eighties, nineties, and into the current century. Sheila Jordan, Roswell Rudd, Archie Shepp and Beaver Harris were other early mentors and bandleaders. He has enjoyed special relationships with master drummers: Art Blakey, Dannie Richmond, Philly Joe Jones, Edward Blackwell, Eddie Moore, Idris Muhammad, Billy Hart, Lewis Nash and Matt Wilson as well as Mr. Harris.
The Don Pullen/George Adams Quartet, featuring Dannie Richmond, developed into an intense and rewarding partnership which lasted nearly ten years. In addition to this quartet, Beaver Harris’s 360 Degree Music Experience, Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers, the Sextet and Big Bands of George Russell, the Dannie Richmond Quintet, the Dewey Redman Quartet, and various ensembles led be Mr. Shepp, Mr. Cherry, Mr. Rudd, Don Byron and Joe Lovano, Mr. Brown has performed and/or recorded with Donald Byrd, Booker Ervin, Ted Curson, Lee Konitz, Chet Baker, Terumasa Hino, Marco Tamburini, Betty Carter, Houston Person, Etta Jones, Ben Riley, Lou Donaldson, Jim McNeely, George Cables, Joe Locke, Salvatore Bonafede, Tony Malaby, Jeremy Steig, and Marc Copland.
He’s helped young people around the world to nurture their interest in and passion for jazz from North Carolina to Norway, from Helsinki to New York, to Hong Kong and Taiwan. He is on the faculty at the New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music in New York City, the Green Meadow Waldorf School in Chestnut Ridge, New York and at the Vermont Jazz Center’s summer workshop.
At present, Mr. Brown performs and records in duo with Sheila Jordan, and with various ensembles led by Joe Lovano, David Janeway, Don Byron, Jane Ira Bloom, Jason Rigby, Lena Bloch and Feathery, Krzysztof Popek, Harvey Diamond, Rob Scheps Core-tet, Kristen Lee Sergeant, Kazuki Yamanaka, and Carl Stormer (www.jazzcode.com).
He leads two ensembles: “Cameron Brown and the Hear and Now” and “Cameron Brown and Dannie’s Calypso.” and has appeared on more than 200 recordings as well as DVDs with Art Blakey and Archie Shepp. Cameron Brown and the Hear and Now has two releases on the Omnitone label: “Here and How!” and “Here and How!, Volume 2.”