Maverick Persona

"Frozen" is a song by American singer Madonna from her seventh studio album Ray of Light (1998). It was released as the lead single from the album on February 23, 1998, by Maverick Records…

A monumental innovator, icon, and maverick, trumpeter Miles Davis helped define the course of jazz as well as popular culture in the 20th century, bridging the gap between bebop, modal music, funk, and fusion. Throughout most of his 50-year career, Davis played the trumpet in a lyrical, introspective style, often employing a stemless Harmon mute to make his sound more personal and intimate. It was a style that, along with his brooding stage persona, earned him the nickname "Prince of Darkness." However, Davis proved to be a dazzlingly protean artist, moving into fiery modal jazz in the '60s and electrified funk and fusion in the '70s, drenching his trumpet in wah-wah pedal effects along the way.

In a career that took flight in 1985 with immediate commercial and critical acclaim, guitar virtuoso Stanley Jordan has consistently displayed a chameleonic musical persona of openness, imagination, versatility, respect and maverick daring. Be it bold reinventions of classical masterpieces or soulful explorations through pop-rock hits, to blazing straight ahead jazz.

Iiro Rantala plays the piano with “emotional magnetism and musical intelligence”; he has a “virtuosic prowess as an improviser capable of enormous idiomatic and emotional range.” (Downbeat) This praise from the American magazine’s review of the Finnish pianist’s third and recent studio-recorded solo album for ACT, “My Finnish Calendar” (2019) sums up the astonishing variety which people who know his playing well might almost start to take for granted. The citation for the 2016 JTI Jazz Prize in Trier also does well to define the way audiences take him to their heart: “Rantala can sweep listeners off their feet, he can be clown and magician, charmer and virtuoso, maverick and humorist.”