Brian Martin

Biography
Articles

Award-winning trombonist, composer, and educator Brian Martin is based both in the music scene of his home state of Iowa as well as the Greater Boston area where he currently resides. As a performer, Martin has performed alongside international and national touring artists in addition to leading his own groups. His most ambitious project is his Brian Martin Big Band, an ensemble ranging from 17-20 pieces dedicated to performing his original music, which is composed of musicians from New England and the Midwest.

As a writer, his compositions and arrangements have received accolades from the Jazz Educators Network and DownBeat Magazine. He has been commissioned to write new music for groups ranging in experience and ensemble from elementary concert bands to professional jazz groups and everything in-between. As an educator, Martin has worked with students ranging from elementary to the university level. His students have received various awards and honors, ranging from acceptance into auditioned ensembles at the All-State and District levels to receiving DownBeat Magazine awards of their own.

The Brian Martin Big Band: Old Home/New Home

Read "Old Home/New Home" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
August 23, 2025

Brian Martin, who as a working musician wears many hats--trombonist, composer, arranger, educator and band leader among them--has taken those hats from his native Iowa and given them a new mailing address in the Boston, Massachusetts, area. Which is a big deal. Big enough, at least, for Martin to have devoted much of Old Home/New Home, the Brian Martin Big Band's debut recording, to the ins and outs and ups and downs of leaving one's friendly confines to plant new ...

Album Review

Mike Thompson: 6th Avenue

Read "6th Avenue" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
May 30, 2025

Composer and arranger Mike Thompson was in his mid-twenties when 6th Avenue, his debut album as leader of a big band, was recorded (in the mid-2020s) at Q Division Studios in Cambridge, Massachusetts, enlisting for the most part veteran Boston-area musicians whom Thompson had met and befriended while studying at the Berklee School of Music, from which he was graduated in 2021. Although Thompson names Bob Brookmeyer, Maria Schneider and Igor Stravinsky as role models, you would be ...