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Jazz Articles about Rich Matteson
Rich Matteson-Red Mitchell: Life's a Take
by Jack Bowers
It’s almost as hard to comprehend that this buoyant album was recorded almost 15 years ago as it is to accept the fact that neither Rich Matteson (“the world’s greatest Jazz euphonium player”) nor Red Mitchell (“one of the world’s two greatest bassists to share that surname”) is no longer with us. Ironically, the session’s scurrying, bluesy title tune, “Life’s a Take,” was dedicated to Fred Crane, a longtime friend and colleague who passed away shortly before Rich and Red ...
read moreRich Matteson Sextet: "Pardon Our Dust, We're Making Changes"
by Jack Bowers
If the late Rich Matteson had chosen performing instead of education as a career, he could’ve challenged harmonica virtuoso Toots Thielemans for top honors each year in Down Beat magazine’s “miscellaneous instruments” category. Matteson, who established the Jazz Studies program at the University of North Florida in Jacksonville, often joked that he was “the world’s greatest Jazz euphonium player” (because he was, of course, the only one). Rich was definitely the first Jazz euphonium player I ever heard (at the ...
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