Jim Hall (musician)

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Jim Hall
Image:Jim Hall.jpg Jazz guitarist Jim Hall, in 2005
Background information
Birth name	James Stanley Hall
Born	December 4 1930 (1930-12-04) (age 78)
Origin	Buffalo, New York
Genre(s)	jazz/cool jazz/post-bop
Occupation(s)	Guitarist, composer, arranger
Instrument(s)	guitar
Years active	1955 - present
Label(s)	ArtistShare, Telarc

James Stanley Hall (born December 4, 1930, Buffalo, New York) is an American jazz guitarist.

[edit] Career

Educated at the Cleveland Institute of Music, Hall moved to Los Angeles where he began to attract national, and then international, attention in the late 1950s.

There he studied classic guitar with Vincente Gómez.

He played with Chico Hamilton Quintet, (1955-1956), Jimmy Giuffre Trio (1956-1959), Ella Fitzgerald (1960-1961), Ben Webster, Hampton Hawes, Bob Brookmeyer, John Lewis, Zoot Sims, Paul Desmond, Lee Konitz and Bill Evans.

By 1960 Jim had arrived in New York to work with Sonny Rollins and Art Farmer, among others. His live and recorded collaborations with Bill Evans, Paul Desmond and Ron Carter are legendary.

His first formal recognition as a composer came in 1997, when Hall won the New York Jazz Critics Circle Award for Best Jazz Composer/Arranger. His pieces for string, brass, and vocal ensembles can be heard on his "Textures" and "By Arrangement" recordings. His original composition, "Quartet Plus Four," a piece for jazz quartet augmented by the Zapolski string quartet, was debuted in Denmark during the concert and ceremony where he was awarded the coveted Jazzpar Prize, and later released on CD.

His most recent large-scale composition was a concerto for guitar and orchestra, commissioned by Towson University in Maryland for The First World Guitar Congress, which was debuted in June 2004 with the Baltimore Symphony.

In accepting the NEA Jazz Masters Fellowship award in January 2004, he said, “The women and men who have received this award in the past have spread peace and love throughout the world, something that governments might emulate. I am pleased to be one of the peacemakers.”

Some years ago, Guitar Player magazine quoted Hall as saying "I do feel good about my playing. The instrument keeps me humble. Sometimes I pick it up and it seems to say `No, you can't play today.' I keep at it anyway though." Jim and his wife, Jane, who is both a psychoanalyst and a songwriter, live in New York City’s Greenwich Village with their dog, Django.