Jazz in the post-war years: In the early 1940s, bebop-style performers began to shift jazz from danceable popular music toward a more challenging "musician's music." The most influential bebop musicians included saxophonist Charlie Parker, pianists Bud Powell and Thelonious Monk, trumpeters Dizzy Gillespie and Clifford Brown, and drummer Max Roach. Divorcing itself from dance music, bebop established itself more as an art form, thus lessening its potential popular and commercial appeal. Composer Gunther Schuller wrote, "In 1943 I heard the great Earl Hines band which had Bird in it and all those other great musicians. They were playing all the flatted
Jazz Mafia from a non musical family, yet he began playing trombone in fourth grade after his neighbor introduced him to the instrument. His music teacher Ken Winett turned him on to different genres including jazz, gospel, and Jamaican pre-reggae rhythms. Theis’ passion for jazz changed his junior year of high school. At the time Theis was in a garage band. One day the band was locked out of their practice room and were left with only horn instruments, so they decided to play their band's songs on the horns. That moment changed his perception of Jazz music. Theis studied jazz composition