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SEMJA Award to Bess BonnierThe
2003 SEMJA Award will be given to Bess Bonnier for her contributions
to the Detroit jazz community as a pianist and educator over the last
half century. She is part of the Detroit piano school and has been recognized
as such at Detroit piano summits in the Big Apple. To celebrate Bonnier,
SEMJA invites everyone to Baker's Bonnier is part of the second generation of beboppers
who emerged in Detroit in the 1950s. While attending Northern High School
she met one of the leading lights of this remarkable group of musicians,
Tommy Flanagan, and later became close to two other Detroit piano giants:
Barry Harris and Roland Hanna. She formed her own trio in the mid-1950s
and recorded for Argo Records in Chicago in 1958. For half of the Bonnier has been an active jazz educator since the seventies, when she worked at Detroit's Cass Technical High School as an artist-in-residence. Her most recent recordings are Love Notes and Suite William on Noteworks Records. The former features the quartet of younger musicians she has played with in the last ten years, including bassist Paul Keller. The latter is a unique tribute to Shakespeare where her tunes combine a jazz sextet and a variety of voices. It is the logical artistic outcome for someone with an English degree and bebop mentoring from some of the masters of the craft.. I N - T H I S - I S S U E : |
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1960s
she teemed up with vibraphonist Jack Brokensha and his quartet at his
club in the New Center area.