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Melba Doretta Liston (January 13, 1926 – April 23, 1999) was an American jazz trombonist, musical arranger, and composer. She was the first woman trombonist to play in big bands during the 1940s and 1960s.〔(Melba Liston ) at Discogs.〕 ==Life and career== Liston was born in Kansas City, Missouri. At the age of seven, Melba's mother purchased her a trombone. Her family was very encouraging of her musical pursuits, as they were all music lovers. Melba Liston was primarily self-taught, but "encouraged by her guitar-playing grandfather," who she spent significant time with learning to play spirituals and folk songs. At the age of eight, she was already good enough to be soloing on the local radio station.〔Nicole Williams Sitaraman, ("Melba Liston" ), The Girls in the Band.〕 At the age of ten, she moved to Los Angeles, California. She was classmates with Dexter Gordon, and friends with Eric Dolphy.〔 After playing in youth bands and studying with Alma Hightower and others, she joined the big band led by Gerald Wilson in 1943. She began to work with the emerging major names of the bebop scene in the mid-1940s. She recorded with saxophonist Dexter Gordon in 1947, and joined Dizzy Gillespie's big band (which included saxophonists John Coltrane, Paul Gonsalves, and pianist John Lewis) in New York for a time,〔 when Wilson disbanded his orchestra in 1948. She toured with Count Basie for a time, and then with Billie Holiday (1949) but was so profoundly affected by the indifference of the audiences and the rigors of the road that she gave up playing and turned to education instead. Liston taught for about three years. She took a clerical job for some years, and supplemented her income by taking work as an extra in Hollywood, including appearances in ''The Prodigal'' (1955) and ''The Ten Commandments'' (1956). She re-joined Gillespie for tours sponsored by the US State Department in 1956 and 1957, recorded with Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers (1957), and formed her own all-women quintet in 1958. In 1959, she visited Europe with the show ''Free and Easy'', for which Quincy Jones was music director. She accompanied Billy Eckstine with the Quincy Jones Orchestra on ''At Basin Street East'' (originally released October 1, 1961, for Verve Records). In the 1960s she began collaborating with pianist Randy Weston, arranging compositions (primarily his own) for mid-size to large ensembles. This association, especially strong in the 1960s, would be rekindled in the late 1980s and 1990s until her death. In addition, she worked for a variety of leaders including Milt Jackson, Clark Terry, and Johnny Griffin, as well as working as an arranger for various Motown records, even appearing on albums by Ray Charles and others. In 1964, she helped establish the Pittsburgh Jazz Orchestra. In 1971 she was chosen as Musical Arranger for a Stax Records recording artist named Calvin Scott whose album was being produced by Stevie Wonder's first producer Clarence Paul. On this project she worked with Joe Sample and Wilton Felder of the Jazz Crusaders, blues guitarist Arthur Adams, and jazz drummer Paul Humphrey. Due to the financial issues at Stax Records when this album was released in 1972 it did not chart, but Melba's arrangements on the album are some of her finest work. In 1973, however, she once again took a break from her US-based musical projects, moving to Jamaica to teach at the Jamaica School of Music for six years (1973–79), before returning to the USA to lead her own bands. During her time in Jamaica, she composed and arranged the music for the classic 1975 comedy film ''Smile Orange'' (starring Carl Bradshaw, who three years earlier starred in the very first Jamaican film, ''The Harder They Come''). The ''Smile Orange'' experience was probably her only known venture into composing reggae music (on which, in this case, she collaborated with playwright Trevor Rhone for the lyrics). Sadly, a soundtrack album for ''Smile Orange'' was never released or made available. She was forced to give up playing in 1985 after a stroke left her partially paralyzed,〔 but she continued to arrange music with Randy Weston. In 1987, she was awarded the “Jazz Masters Fellowship” of the National Endowment for the Arts. After suffering from repeated strokes, she died in Los Angeles, California, in 1999, a few days after a major tribute to her and Randy Weston’s music at Harvard University. Her funeral, held at St. Peter’s in Manhattan, featured extensive musical performances by Weston with Jann Parker (performing Liston’s composition “African Lady”), as well as by Chico O’Farrill’s Afro-Cuban ensemble and by Lorenzo Shihab (vocals). 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Melba Liston」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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