Echoing the recent birthday "party" with octogenarian Cool jazz reedman Lee Konitz, the Eastman School of Music's Jazz Studies Department is presenting another jazz legend, the composer, valve trombonist and conductor Bob Brookmeyer to help celebrate his upcoming 80th birthday and his achievements in a lifetime in jazz. 
Bob Brookmeyer is one of the foremost jazz composers working today and taught many of today’s other leading composers in jazz, including Maria Schneider and Jim McNeely.
On Wednesday, December 2nd, Brookmeyer will be playing some too during the performance in Eastman's Kilbourn Hall with the Eastman New Jazz Ensemble, directed by Dave Rivello. The music presented will take a chronological view of Brookmeyer’s work, including music written for the Terry Gibbs Dreamband, the Gerry Mulligan Concert Jazz Band, Mel Lewis and the Jazz Orchestra, and Brookmeyer’s own New Art Orchestra. As a special highlight, there will also be five mini-premieres based on the music of “Happy Birthday,” written by five different composers who are special friends of Brookmeyer’s—Bill Holman, Jim McNeely, Dave Rivello, John Hollenbeck and Ryan Truesdell. Dave Rivello will also be giving a pre-concert lecture at 7 pm on the evening of the concert. The concert will begin at 8 pm. Admission is free.
If you can't get enough of Brookmeyer, you'll have another chance to catch him on Thursday, December 3rd at 9:00 pm. Bob is planning to guest solo with The Dave Rivello Ensemble as they record live for their next CD at the Village Rock Café at 213 Main Street in East Rochester. For more information, please contact Dave Rivello at (585) 381-4309 or email.
Dave Rivello wrote in to share a link to Bob's reaction to his 80th B-day here in Rochester in his "Currents" on the ArtistShare site: http://www.artistshare.com/projects/project_experience.aspx?artistID=22&projectID=40&newsID=3886
Posted by: Greg Bell | December 17, 2009 at 07:02 PM