Scott LaFaro

Scott LaFaro (1936 - 1961) was a double bass player of American Jazz .

Biography

Born on April 3rd, 1936 with Newark (New Jersey), it is attracted very young person by the music and starts by studying the Clarinette and the Saxophone tenor, then is devoted definitively to the Contrebasse.
It begins in formations from Rhythm and blues in the middle of the Années 1950, then is engaged in 1955 in the group of Buddy Morrow and in the quintet of Chet Baker between 1956 and 1957.

At the beginning of 1957, it is with Los Angeles, occurring with the Light House of Hermosa Beach with the guitarist Barney Kessel. Fine reader, and already virtuoso, it records and turns with Victor Feldman, Harold Land, Marty Paich and Stan Kenton. II will take part in the discussed beginnings of Ornette Coleman in California. “One placed it at the front of the scene, because he was the only bass player with being able to play the melodies also quickly” will say Paul Bley. In 1959, it turns over to New York to repeat with Benny Goodman. It gains the first place of Critics Poll of the review Down Beat , category “New Star”.

From 1959 to 1961 the pianist Bill Evans form with him and the beater Paul Motian a Trio which, in two discs studio Portrait in Jazz and Explorations and a recording Live, will notably mark the dynamics and the shape of the trio jazz. The trio develops a form of impromptu counterpoint where the instruments dialog equally. Scott LaFaro is then the first bass player to escape from the low Walking to follow the soloist. A disc with Booker Little shows it in precursor modern Contrebasse.

Taking part in the first recordings and concerts of the Third Stream or Third Current which sought to reconcile the modern music and the jazz, initiated by John Lewis and Gunther Schuller, it records a few days later with the double four-bit byte of Ornette Coleman the disc which was going to open a new direction for the Jazz: " Free Jazz " besides, the album will give its name to this form of collective improvisation. From 1959 to 1961, he will have also played with Thelonious Monk, John Coltrane, Stan Getz with which he will take part in the Newport Jazz Festival on July 4th, 1961.

A few days after a legendary concert with the Village Vanguard with Bill Evans, Scott LaFaro is killed in the car on the road out of Geneva (New York) on July 6th, 1961.

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