Home » Member Page
FivePlay Jazz Quintet
About Me
My Jazz Story
The Back Story
Tony: Let me tell you how it all started: Spring 1977: I got my first glimpse of Laura in Latin
American music class at Berklee College of Music. Fast-forward to the end of the summer,
we run into each other on Mass Ave near Symphony Hall. I tell her “We could make
beautiful music together.” (Really.) She puts together a session, and I think “This girl has
got a “sound”! But, it’s more than that: it’s love.
Laura: I knew it must be love when I’m playing a dismal dive way out in the sticks, and
Tony shows up there to see me! A few weeks later, we play our first gig together. There’s a
fight in the club, the cops show up, we have to flee out the back door, in the chaos I lose
one of my shoes, and I’ve never so much fun! I know we’re meant for each other.
Tony: Zoom ahead a few years. I come home from rehearsing with John Horner’s American
Dream Jazz Band and tell Laura “There’s this drummer…” Alan might have been out of his
teens by then. I’m not sure, but the metric fluidity, huge ears, understanding of form, and
the humor, all were completely arrived.
Laura: Meanwhile, I play a casual-the band is terrible, but I’m knocked out by their
amazing singer, Emily Norman. I persuade her to quit, and Tony and I and form our own
quintet, Spiral Dance, with Emily and Alan. We do unusual arrangements of standards, and
our own originals, gigging around Boston and New England.
Tony: A few years later Laura comes home from a rehearsal, saying “There was this sax
player there…” She starts playing in Dave Tidball’s band Minotaur, four horns, Dave’s
original music. I go to one of their concerts and our boy sounds rather amazing, lyrical,
agile. He even plays soprano sax in tune – impressive!
Tony: Now it’s 1984-Laura and I get married and move to the Bay Area. Alan and Dave
follow out to the West Coast soon after, so we put together Triceratops, the three-horned
jazz sextet, playing all original music by Dave, Laura and me. Several years of gigs,
concerts, festivals and a CD ensue. Somewhere in there, I play with Paul Smith, and tell
Laura “There’s this bass player…this guy Knows Things.”
Laura: Some years later: Tony’s switched from woodwinds to guitar, and he and I have been
writing lots of music. We’ve both been doing other projects, but we want to get back to
playing our originals. So, we put together successor to Triceratops: FivePlay, with Dave,
Alan, and Paul. And now we’ve recorded two CDs, with another one coming soon.