Sam Furnace

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Sam Furnace (* 1954 , † 26. January 2004 in Brooklyn , New York City ) was an American jazz - and blues - saxophone (alto, tenor and baritone saxophone), flutist, arranger and. Composer .

Sam Furnace played early in his career in soul bands and in the backing bands of The Temptations and Four Tops . In the mid-1970s he was a member of Billy Mitchell's Henry Street Settlement Jazz Band ; He has also worked with Art Blakey , McCoy Tyner , Dizzy Gillespie , Chico O'Farrill , Mongo Santamaría ( Soy Yo , 1987) and was a long-time member of Fred Ho's Afro-Asian Music Ensemble , the Brooklyn Saxophone Quartet and in the 1980s and 90s in Julius Hemphill's various band projects . The alto used Furnace as tenor and baritone saxophonist in his big band and sextet. Furnace has appeared on Hemphill's sextet albums on Black Saint including Fat Man and the Hard Blues (1991) and Five Chord Stud (1993). After Hemphill's death in 1995, he continued to work with his sextet.

In 1990 he played in Craig Harris ' Big Band ( 4 Play ) and the New York Composers Orchestra . In the 2000s he played in Elliott Sharp's formation Terraplane (Blues for Next, 2000), in Bill Cole's Untempered Ensemble , with the Jazz Passengers and in the big band of Arturo O'Farrill .

Furnace was also active as a blues musician ; he worked as an accompanist for blues guitarist Johnny Copeland and was involved in the James Brown project (1991) of the formation Cold Sweat . One of his last sessions was Elliott Sharps Terrplanes' blues album Do the Don'T .

Sam Furnace did not conduct any recording sessions under his own name; half of the tracks on the Brooklyn Saxophone Quartet album Far Side of Here contain his final studio session. Furnace died of cancer in 2004.

Marty Ehrlich dedicated the 2005 composition Keeper of the Flame (In Memory of Sam Furnace ) to him, contained in the album News on the Rail .

Discographic notes

  • Brooklyn Saxophone Quartet: Far Side of Here (OmniTone, 2004)
  • Julius Hemphill: At Dr King's Table (New World, 1995)
  • Fred Ho: The Underground Railroad to My Heart ( Soul Note , 1990-93)
  • Fred Ho: Once Upon a Time in Chinese America ... (Inova, 1999)

literature

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personal data
SURNAME Furnace, Sam
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Furnace, Samuel
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American jazz musician
DATE OF BIRTH 1954
DATE OF DEATH January 26, 2004
Place of death Brooklyn , New York City