Jazz Articles about Bob Brookmeyer

Bob Brookmeyer: Stay Out of the Sun

by Matthew Wuethrich
July 7, 2004

In valve trombonist Bob Brookmeyer's biography, one can trace the map of jazz's history, both musical and personal. Brookmeyer has spent time in many of jazz's major ensembles, including Basie, Thornhill, Ellington and Lewis, and small groups, playing with Mulligan, Getz, Giuffre and Mingus. Along the way he has taken part in and contributed to the music's orchestral and instrumental innovations. He has also unfortunately experienced one of jazz's major tragedies: substance addiction, a disease that nearly cost him everything.

A Bob Brookmeyer Bonanza

by Elliott Simon
February 14, 2004

Turning 75 this year, valve trombonist Bob Brookmeyer brought his New Art Orchestra to town last month at the IAJE and a “Battle of the Bands” at the Village Vanguard. He endures as a master of the “cool” and continues to produce musical permutations resulting in elaborate and complex compositions that are clear and pure: music, that is, well, “cool”. Island is co-led with a musician who is as respected as Brookmeyer, 74-year-old flugelhorn/trumpet player Kenny Wheeler. In addition to ...

Bob Brookmeyer and Kenny Wheeler: Island

by Rex Butters
January 7, 2004

Veterans Bob Brookmeyer and Kenny Wheeler explore shared sensibilities on Island, a collection that could have fit comfortably in Wheeler’s ECM catalogue, but instead spearheads the resuscitated Artists House label. Although they’ve not recorded together before, they set eachother up and finish eachother’s thoughts like a long married couple. The island in question seems more north Atlantic than Caribbean. While the program tends toward moody mid-tempo tunes, the high level of playing keeps monotony at bay.

The ...

The Bob Brookmeyer New Art Orchestra: Waltzing with Zoe

by Jack Bowers
July 1, 2002

Spectacular. There’s no other way to describe “Seesaw,” the opening number on the second album by Bob Brookmeyer’s German–based New Art Orchestra. A shame the Grammy Awards don’t include one for best big–band composition (even though there is a ludicrous prize for “best Jazz solo”), as “Seesaw” would win the honor going away. The highest compliment this reviewer can pay Brookmeyer’s “dialogue between drums and band” is that it brought to mind some favorite themes (“Playground,” “Big Swing Face,” “555 ...

Bob Brookmeyer: Plays Piano: Holiday

by Dave Nathan
November 1, 2001

Being able to play more than one instrument is quite common in jazz, especially these days. Even moving between reed and horn is not unusual as Benny Carter, Jay Thomas and others have demonstrated. But moving from a trombone to a piano with sufficient confidence to make an album with the “second" instrument is more than a challenge, it's a remarkable feat. And an album that's more than 70 minutes long to boot! That's what valve trombonist and jazz icon ...

Bob Brookmeyer with the Ed Partyka Jazz Orchestra: Madly Loving You

by Jack Bowers
November 1, 2001

Kansas City–bred valve trombone master Bob Brookmeyer is top–billed on this handsomely conceived and superbly performed album because it was a gift from Ed Partyka’s Jazz Orchestra and a number of prominent composer / arrangers to Brookmeyer on his seventieth birthday in December 1999. Partyka, a Chicagoan who has lived since 1990 in Cologne, Germany, had taken part in Brookmeyer’s Jazz Composers’ Workshops in Cologne, was deeply influenced by them and sought to repay the debt by producing a big–band ...

Bob Brookmeyer: Electricity

by Douglas Payne
May 1, 1997

Electricity is another one of an infrequent series of recordings by Bob Brookmeyer, who used to pop up all over the place throughout the 1950s and 1960s. While he's always been rooted firmly in the mainstream (Gerry Mulligan, the Concert Jazz Band, the Thad Jones / Mel Lewis Orchestra and his own records on Verve), Brookmeyer has also consistently approached creative music in unorthodox ways (his two-piano quartet with Bill Evans, and his trombone jazz samba records). His greatest gifts, ...