Charlie Mariano
Alto and soprano saxophonist Charlie Mariano was born Carmine Ugo Mariano in Boston on November 12, 1923, the son of Italian immigrants Giovanni and Maria (DiGironimo) Mariano. He heard the sounds of light opera and Neapolitan songs around his home from an early age, supplemented by jazz on the radio, and his sister Colina gave him his first saxophone when he was 17.
After three years in the military during World War II, he studied at Schillinger House (now Berklee College of Music), where he taught in 1957, 1965 and 1969. He was a fixture in Boston clubs in the late ‘40s, playing with Shorty Sherock, Nat Pierce and his own groups, and later in his 20s he worked with Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie and Erroll Garner. In 1953, 30-year old Mariano joined Stan Kenton’s big band, remaining with them through 1955 (though he later expressed a lack of enthusiasm about the experience). He formed his own group after that with his then wife Toshiko Akiyoshi, whom he’d met while teaching at Berklee.
CHARLES MINGUS, ELVIN JONES, MOVE TO JAPAN, JAZZ FUSION PIONEER
Mariano played with Charles Mingus during a productive stage in the bassist’s career, and contributed to seminal projects such as 1963’s The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady and 1964’s Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus. Drummer Elvin Jones enlisted him to participate in the 1965 sessions for his famed Impulse! Records tribute to John Coltrane, Dear John C. In 1969, he formed Osmosis with Charlie Bechler (piano), Danny Comfort (bass) and Dick Banda (drums).
Following that period, he lived in Japan, where he came in contact with Asian music for the first time and studied flute; he went on to be one of the leading exponents of jazz fusion that incorporated Asian elements. He also worked in the jazz-rock fusion idiom and, according to music journalist Walter Kolosky, “had it not been for a mailing snafu, Charlie Mariano’s Helen 12 Trees [from 1976] may have been one of the most renowned fusion albums of its day.” The promotional copies for that release were lost and nobody caught the oversight until two decades later.
MOVE TO EUROPE, OTHER COLLABORATIONS, ENSEMBLES, DEATH
After 1971, Mariano lived in Europe where played with leading musicians such as Italian drummer Aldo Romano, Belgian guitarist Philippe Catherine and Dutch keyboardist Jasper van’t Hof. He spent a lot of time in India at the beginning of the ‘70s, learning how to play the nagaswaram, and in 1975, with Catherine and van’t Hof, he co-formed Pork Pie, a short-lived but widely admired fusion supergroup named in tribute to Lester Young. Between 1977 and 1998, he worked with the United Rock & Jazz Ensemble.
Mariano recorded and toured with the Argentinean bandoneon player Dino Saluzzi and the songwriter Konstantin Wecker and released many LPs under his own name. In later years, in addition to solo projects, he worked with the Mariano/Dodgion Sextet, Stan Kenton, Shelly Manne, Bill Holman, Frank Rosolino, Toshiko Akiyoshi, Charles Mingus, Elvin Jones, McCoy Tyner, Ebehard Weber, Mal Waldron, Don Alias, Stu Goldberg and Gene Perla, among others. In 1996, he started making regular appearances with the European Jazz Ensemble.
Mariano died at age 85 on June 16, 2009 in Cologne, Germany. He’d been given a year to live after being diagnosed with prostate cancer in 1995, but “a mixture of orthodox and alternative therapies kept him going creatively and physically for a further 14 years,” according to an obituary published in The Guardian.
(by Cynthia Mariano)
