Charlie Mariano born 12 November 1923

Carmine Ugo Mariano (November 12, 1923 – June 16, 2009) was an American jazz saxophonist who focused on the alto and soprano saxophone. He occasionally performed and recorded on flute and nadaswaram as well. 

Charlie Mariano was weaned on his father’s beloved Italian operas and the big bands he heard on the radio: Benny Goodman, Duke Ellington, and Count Basie, whose saxophonist Lester Young became Mr. Mariano’s first musical hero. He would not get his own saxophone until his 18th birthday, but in short order, the ambitious young musician was playing nightly at Izzy Ort’s bar and dance hall in what was then known as Boston’s combat zone, for $19 a week. 

Mariano was drafted in 1943, but never saw combat. He was tapped to play in one of the several small music ensembles that entertained at officers’ clubs. Near the end of the war, Mr. Mariano, who was stationed on an air base north of Los Angeles, heard Charlie Parker play live for the first time, during Parker’s first West Coast gig, at Billy Berg’s jazz club in Hollywood. After leaving the Army in 1945, he drifted to Chicago, then Albuquerque, picking up work where he could, and finally wound up back in Boston. 

When the big-band era began winding down and many local clubs were closed, the largely self-taught Mr. Mariano enrolled in music school for the first time, at the Schillinger House of Music, which would later be renamed Berklee College of Music. Mariano started to develop his own sound under the tutelage of Joe Viola, and he became a fixture on Boston’s vibrant jazz scene, collaborating with Nat Pierce, Jaki Byard, and fellow students Herb Pomeroy and Quincy Jones. 

                                    

His career can easily be divided into two phases. Early on he was a fixture in Boston, playing with Shorty Sherock (1948), Nat Pierce (1949-1950), and his own groups. In 1950, Mariano released his first recording as a bandleader, and several years later founded the Jazz Workshop, a hands-on school that emphasized experience over instruction and later evolved into a popular nightclub. After gigging with a band co-led by Chubby Jackson and Bill Harris, Mariano toured with Stan Kenton's Orchestra (1953-1955) which earned him a strong reputation.

He moved to Los Angeles in 1956 (working with Shelly Manne and other West Coast jazz stars), returned to Boston to teach in 1958 at Berklee, and the following year, had a return stint with Kenton. After marrying Toshiko Akiyoshi, Mariano co-led a group with the pianist on and off up to 1967, living in Japan during part of the time and also working with Charles Mingus (1962-1963). 

The second phase of his career began with the formation of his early fusion group Osmosis in 1967. Known at the time as a strong bop altoist with a sound of his own developed out of the Charlie Parker style, Mariano began to open his music up to the influences of folk music from other cultures, pop, and rock. He taught again at Berklee, traveled to India and the Far East, and in the early '70s settled in Europe. 

Among the groups Mariano has worked with have been Pork Pie (which also featured Philip Catherine), the United Jazz & Rock Ensemble, and Eberhard Weber's Colours. Charlie Mariano's airy tones on soprano and the nagaswaram (an Indian instrument a little like an oboe) fit right in on some new agey ECM sessions and he also recorded as a leader through the years for Imperial, Prestige, Bethlehem, World Pacific, Candid (with Toshiko Akiyoshi in 1960), Regina, Atlantic, Catalyst, MPS, CMP, Leo, and Calig, among others. 

In 1995 Mariano was given a diagnosis of prostate cancer and warned that he might only survive another year. He threw himself into work with greater zeal than before, as well as undergoing alternative therapies, and brought his burly frame, shock of white hair and broad-toned saxophone sound to a characteristically wide range of musical projects, culminating last year in a final series of reunions with Catherine and Van’t Hof both in the recording studio and in a triumphant concert at the Theaterhaus in Stuttgart. 

Mariano succumbed to complications from cancer June 16, 2009, at a hospital in Cologne, Germany, where he lived. 

(Edited from Wikipedia. All Music, Boston .com., The Guardian. & Jazz Profiles)