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Artist
Randy Weston
12+ albums
jazzpianojazz pianoafricanafrican jazz
about
Randy Weston (April 6, 1926 – September 1, 2018) was an American jazz pianist and composer. Weston's piano style owes much to Duke Ellington and Thelonious Monk. Beginning in the 1950s, he worked often with trombonist and arranger Melba Liston. Described as "America's African Musical Ambassador", he has said, "What I do I do because it's about teaching and informing everyone about our most natural cultural phenomenon. It's really about Africa and her music. Randolph Edward Weston was born in 1926 to Vivian (née Moore) and Frank Weston and was raised in Brooklyn, New York, where his father owned a restaurant. His mother was from Virginia and his father was of Jamaican-Panamanian descent, a staunch Garveyite, who passed on the Pan-Africanist leader's Afrocentric, self-reliant values to his son. Weston studied classical piano as a child and took dance lessons. He graduated from Boys High School in Bedford-Stuyvesant; his father sent him there because it had a reputation for high standards. He took piano lessons from Atwell, because unlike his former piano teachers, Atwell allowed him to play songs outside the classical music repertoire. After serving in the U.S. Army during World War II, Weston ran a restaurant that was frequented by many jazz musicians. Among his piano heroes are Count Basie, Nat King Cole, Art Tatum , Duke Ellington, and his cousin Wynton Kelly. But Thelonious Monk made the biggest impact. In the late 1940s Weston began performing with Bullmoose Jackson,
