Eddie Henderson Quartet Featuring Sharp Radway
Eddie Henderson is an American jazz trumpet and flugelhorn player. He came to prominence in the early 1970s as a member of pianist Herbie Hancock‘s Mwandishi band, going on to lead his own electric/fusion groups through the decade. Henderson earned his medical degree and worked a parallel career as a psychiatrist and musician, turning back to acoustic jazz by the 1990s.
Henderson was born in New York City on October 26, 1940. At the age of nine, he was given an informal lesson by Louis Armstrong, and he continued to study the instrument as a teenager in San Francisco, where he grew up, after his family moved there in 1954, at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music.
Henderson was influenced by the early fusion work of jazz musician Miles Davis, who was a friend of his parents. They met in 1957 when Henderson was aged seventeen.
After completing his medical education, Henderson went back to the Bay area for his medical internship and residency. It was a week-long gig with Herbie Hancock‘s Mwandishi band that led to a three-year job, lasting from 1970 to 1973. In addition to the three albums recorded by the group under Hancock’s name, Henderson recorded his first two albums, Realization (1972) and Inside Out (1973), with Hancock and the Mwandishi group.
After leaving Hancock, the trumpeter worked extensively with Pharoah Sanders, Mike Nock, Norman Connors, and Art Blakey‘s Jazz Messengers, returning to the San Francisco Bay Area in 1975 where he joined the Latin-jazz group Azteca and fronted his bands. While he gained some recognition for his work with the Herbie Hancock Sextet (1970–1973), his records were considered too “commercial”. Henderson has been on the faculty at Juillard School of Music since 2007.
Sharp Radway is a pianist/composer/arranger/author who is a native of Hartford, Connecticut and currently resides in Brooklyn, New York. He remains in demand throughout the country and abroad. He is a protégé of Dr. Randy Weston. Sharp is a formidable and seasoned bandleader, heading various groups of his own (ie. his quintet, quartet, trio, Music Of The Streets, Sharp Radway’s Gospel Jazz Group, Sharp Radway’s Big Band, and various vocal and instrumental duos.) Sharp has worked with several Jazz luminaries and forefathers of the genre. Among them are Yusef Lateef, Benny Golson, Red Holloway, Slide Hampton, Curtis Fuller, James Spaulding, Louis Hayes, Candido Camero, Benny Powell, Eddie Henderson, Hamiet Bluiett, Peewee Ellis, Steve Turre, Fred Wesley, Frank Lacy, Kiane Zawadi, Bucky Pizarelli, Diane Schuur, Joe Lee Wilson, Kevin Mahogany, Nnenna Freelon, Greg Bandy, Ben Dixon, Winard Harper, Leopoldo Fleming, Russell Gunn, Nicolas Payton, and Randy Brecker and many more. He served as music director, pianist, and arranger for The Celebration of Lionel Hampton Big Band and The New York City Ska Orchestra. In addition to playing the piano, he is also a prolific composer and arranger.