Renowned Straightahead Basie arranger Sammy Nestico has died

Tributes are pouring in on social media to the Count Basie arranger Sammy Nestico who has died. He was 96. Sammy Nestico changed my life. He lit the flame for my love of big band music back when I was in middle school. And the fact that this man …

Published: 18 Jan 2021. Updated: 3 years.

Tributes are pouring in on social media to the Count Basie arranger Sammy Nestico who has died. He was 96.

Nestico for 14 years was an arranger for the Count Basie Orchestra. Of Italian descent he grew up in Pittsburgh, playing trombone as a child and starting to gig in clubs. During World War II he was in the US Army Band and later the US Air Force and Marine Corps bands. With Basie he recorded 10 albums together including several Grammy winners. For film and TV he wrote themes and incidental music for hit shows including The Mary Tyler Moore Show and MASH.

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Review: Sonnets for Albert (BBC Radio 4)

Sonnets for Albert in the Seriously podcast series does a lot. First and foremost it is about relating to how you see your father and how your father whether he is there with you or not is still with you deep down in however many ways no matter …

Published: 17 Jan 2021. Updated: 3 years.

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Sonnets for Albert in the Seriously podcast series does a lot. First and foremost it is about relating to how you see your father and how your father whether he is there with you or not is still with you deep down in however many ways no matter however accomplished or not as a father he happened to be. Anthony Joseph, author of Kitch, is the presenter and relates his responses to Albert his father through poetry and commentary. Gregory Porter gives his memories of his own preacher father, Gregory's voice so iridescently interpreting the classic Horace Silver composition 'Song for My Father'. Anthony talks too to writer and friend Raymond Antrobus and to Trinidadian film-maker Mariel Brown on her own writer-father. It is beautifully weaved together. Poetry, the feel and flavour of documentary, personal experience, childhood memories, Trinidadian culture, soul, jazz and the island beat, thought hanging in the air land upright to illuminate variations of shared experience throughout and then resound. Link: to listen