Nathan Davis

Sound Clips from Nathan Davis' "I'm a Fool to Want You" with copyright permission granted by Tomorrow International What Are You Doing (For The Rest of Your Life) Loves Very Own

Nathan Davis was born February 15, 1937, in Kansas City, Kansas, and holds a B.M.E. from the University of Kansas and a Ph.D. from Wesleyan University, Connecticut. He is presently a full Professor of Music at the University of Pittsburgh where he founded the undergraduate Jazz Studies Program and helped establish a Ph.D. program in Ethnomusicology. He is the founder and director of the annual "University of Pittsburgh Jazz Seminar" which is now in its twenty-fourth year. Through his initiative, jazz giants like Dizzy Gillespie, Donald Byrd, Sonny Rollins, Sonny Stitt, James Moody, Max Roach, Jackie Byard, Richard Davis, Elvin Jones, Clarke Terry, Ron Carter and many others have shared the classroom with Pitt students.

Davis has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts which enabled him to complete his "Symphony No. 1 for Orchestra and Jazz Soloists" and other extended works. With a grant from Gulf Oil Corporation, he recorded and produced an LP entitled "Nathan Davis: A Tribute to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr." for the annual "Hand in Hand" celebration of Martin Luther King Week. The work also received its National Premiere at the prestigious Washington, D.C. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. His book, Flute Improvisation, published by Armstrong Flute Corporation, is rapidly becoming an accepted method book in schools throughout the country.

During his ten-year stay in Europe, mainly in Paris as a freelance jazz musician, Nathan studied with Andre Hodeir and took classes at the Sorbonne in Ethnomusicology. He founded the Jazz Studies Program at the Paris American Academy and later became a staff arranger for the Belgium Radio and TV station in Brussels. He has conducted field work in ethnomusicology in Brazil, Turkey, Tunisia, Morocco, and the Caribbean Islands: Martinique, Haiti, Trinidad, Tobago, and most recently Jamaica.

While in Paris, he was a familiar face to TV audiences in Belgium, Holland, Scandinavia, France, Italy, Switzerland, Germany, Yugoslavia, Poland, Spain, Tunisia, Morocco, Monaco, etc. During that time, he played concerts and club dates with jazz artists like Ray Charles, Art Blakey, Eric Dolphy, Donald Byrd, Kenney Clarke, Dextor Gordon, Elvin Jones, Johnny Griffin and many others. As a leader, Davis recorded numerous LP's,* and wrote more than 200 original compositions. He also composed the music for the French version of Jack Gelber's "Connection" and recorded the sound track for the following movies: "Je vous salue Mafia" by Paul Levy, "Trois Chambre a Manhattan" by Marcel Carne and "Balu."

During the summer of 1983 Nathan Davis taught classes in jazz improvisation, music history and composition/arranging at the International Music Workshop in Salzburg, Austria. Recently he conducted Masters in Saxophone at Rio De Janeiro, Brazil at the prestigious Seminarious De Musica Pro Arte. He has received grants from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts and the City of Pittsburgh Annual Seminar on Jazz which featured such artists as Sonny Rollins, Freddie Hubbard and Ron Carter.

Davis is listed in Who's Who in America, 1975; Who's Who Among Black Americans, 1975; Outstanding Educators in America 1975; 1,000 Successful Blacks, 1975 and Leonard Feather's Encyclopedia of Jazz in the Sixties and Seventies, Who's Who in the World of Music.

*among them Happy Girl (Saba 1965), Peace Treaty (SFP 1965), Hip Walk (Saba 1966), Soul Eyes (Saba 1967), Rule of Freedom (Polydor 1968), Nathan Davis Live At the Schola Cantorum (Edici 1969), Makatuka (Segue 1970), Sixth Sense of the 11th House (Segue 1972), If (Tomorrow International 1976).

1. Numerous LPs and CDs, with the Paris Reunion Band.
2. Just Completed an Opera based on James Baldwin's Novel "Just above my head."
3. LP and CD "London by Night."

Provided by the Kendall/Hunt Publishing Company, Dubuque, Iowa in "Writings in Jazz, 4th Ed" by Nathan Davis