Sam Rivers Featured on SECOND Jazz at Lincoln Center Web Chat

• Chat appears on www.jazzatlincolncenter.org
• Participants are invited to submit questions now.
• f Now, on November 3 & 4 in Alice Tully Hall, features world premiere of Jazz at Lincoln Center-commissioned works by Sam Rivers and Eric Reed

Jazz at Lincoln Center (J@LC Mr. Rivers will appear in the J@LC This web chat will offer fans and newcomers the opportunity to ask Mr. Rivers questions 'live' about his upcoming performance and J@LC-commissioned The first J@LC J@LC web chats are produced by J@LC Oldsmobile is a proud sponsor of Jazz at Lincoln Center. Delta Air Lines is the official airlines of Jazz at Lincoln Center.

Sam Rivers (Tenor and Soprano Saxophones, Flute, And Piano) was born in El Reno, Oklahoma on September 25, 1923, and was raised in Chicago and Little Rock, Arkansas. He began taking piano and violin lessons from about age five, later played trombone, and finally fell in love with the tenor saxophone. In 1947, Mr. Rivers moved to Boston to attend the Boston Conservatory of Music, and later Boston University. In Boston, he played with Herb Pomeroy, Nat Pierce, Quincy Jones, and Serge Chaloff. After moving to Florida for two years, he returned to Boston in 1958 to rejoin Mr. Pomeroy's orchestra and become very active in the musical community, leading his own quartet with Hal Galper and playing on his first Blue Note session with Tadd Dameron. He also developed a free improvisation group with drummer Tony Williams, who lobbied for Mr. Rivers to join the Miles Davis Quintet, with whom he played three concerts in Japan. Soon after, he worked to begin documenting his own music as a leader, starting with his debut as bandleader, Fuschia Swing Song, followed by Contours, A New Conception, Involution, and Dimensions and Extensions. Mr. Rivers also recorded with Larry Young, Bobby Hutcherson, and Andrew Hill, and also worked in a quartet with Cecil Taylor, Jimmy Lyons, and Andrew Cyrille that toured Europe in 1969. In 1970 Mr. Rivers, with his wife Bea, opened up a studio in Harlem where he held classes and rehearsals for music and dance. The studio project evolved into a warehouse in the SoHo section of New York, known as Studio Rivbea, which became host to some of New York's most unique concerts and rehearsal bands, including Rivers' own Rivbea Orchestra. In 1987 Rivers began a four-year stint with Dizzy Gillespie's quintet and the United Nations Orchestra. He relocated to Orlando, Florida, where he continues to inspire young musicians and lead his Rivbea Orchestra. In April 2000, Sam Rivers performed a duet concert with Anthony Cole as part of the Jazz at Lincoln Center Duets on the Hudson series.

Now in its tenth year, Jazz at Lincoln Center is the world's largest not-for-profit arts organization dedicated to jazz. With the world-renowned Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra and a comprehensive array of guest artists, Jazz at Lincoln Center advances a unique vision for the continued development of the art of jazz by producing a year-round schedule of education, performance and broadcast events for audiences of all ages. These productions include concerts, national and international tours, residencies, a weekly national radio program, television broadcasts, recordings, publications, an annual high school jazz band competition and festival, a band director academy, a jazz appreciation curriculum for children, advanced training through the Juilliard Institute for Jazz Studies, music publishing, children's concerts, lectures, film programs, and student and educator workshops. Under the leadership of Artistic Director Wynton Marsalis and Executive Producer & Director Rob Gibson, Jazz at Lincoln Center will produce more than 450 events during its 2000-01 season. Currently, Jazz at Lincoln Center is building its new home - Frederick P. Rose Hall - the first-ever education, performance, and broadcast facility devoted to jazz, slated to open in the fall of 2003.

Murray Street Enterprise is a production, marketing, and consulting organization specializing in collaborations with cultural institutions to create radio, audio, and Internet programming. Murray Street Enterprise productions and co-productions, including “The Territory of Art," “One People Many Voices," The National Park Service-Ellis Island audio installations, “HEAT with John Hockenberry," “Future Forward," and Jazz From Lincoln Center, have won two George Foster Peabody Awards, as well as honors from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the International Radio Festivals, the National Federation of Community Broadcasters, and three Grammy nominations. The company was founded in 1981 by Steve Rathe.