Bill Summers
Acting
Biography
Bill Summers is an New Orleans based Afro-Cuban and Latin Jazz percussionist and multi-instrumentalist who has played across jazz, funk, and world music. Summers is known for his diversity in percussion across congas, bongos, marimba and steel drums as well as his versatility across musical genres, receiving various accolades and critical acclaim. Summers studied piano, composition, and theory at Detroit Conservatory of Music and the Michigan Conservatory of Music, as well as Ethnomusicology at University of California, Berkeley. Summers has performed on TV and Movie soundtracks including 'The Color Purple' and 'Roots'. He has played with and contributed to Herbie Hancock's Headhunters, collaborated widely with other musicians such as Quincy Jones, Carlos Santana, and Bobby McFerrin, and is a founding member of Los Hombres Calientes. Summers has been active as a composer, arranger, and producer, and founded the Summers Multi Ethnic Institute of Arts in New Orleans with his former wife, Yvette Bostic-Summers.
Known For
Jon Brewer examines the history of blues music in America, marrying startling imagery and expert interviews with archival performances to fill in the gaps about the music itself, its origins and the impact it had and continues to have on popular music today.
Monochrome: Black, White & Blue
2005 release. Joe Zawinul & the Zawinul Syndicate featuring Scott Henderson on guitar, recorded live at the Munich Philharmonie in Munich Germany in 1989. The bands performance is drawn on the power and theatricality of rock and R&B, while maintaining allegiance to jazz and the pure spirit of improvisation, they tapped into the so-called “jazzfusion”. The entire show performing material by Joe Zawinul, Duke Ellington and Thelononius Monk. Guitarist extraordinaire Scott Henderson performance displayed amazing melodic phrasing. Exact match for Joe's type of fusion. Flawless, screaming loud phrasing with lots of jazz fusion improvisation. There are portions that Scott's tone must have overpowered Joe's synthesizer but Joe Zawinul loves it! Scott's absolute control is an expression of jazz harmony. Very intense, precise, intricate, and abundant of tuneful compositions.