Bob Brookmeyer

This piece is a dynamic, free-chromatic conversation for string trio — violin, viola, cello — though you rarely hear the three voices playing as an ensemble, which is a unique characteristic of this work. Despite consisting primarily of solo playing, the sense of chamber music still exists through the interaction — the conversation — that the three musicians are having, as if they were all playing together. The violin starts the dialogue with a bold, continuous statement, which then passes back and forth — almost bickering — with the viola. When they have exhausted their respective sides of the narrative, the cello enters to add another perspective to this dynamic exchange. After the cello’s statement, the viola and violin get a last chance to say their piece before the conversation slowly fizzles out, creating the only moment of the whole piece where the three instruments are playing simultaneously.

Bob was particularly proud of this piece from his more “serial period” of the late 80s-early 90s, and often shared it with his students at the New England Conservatory. In Dave Rivello’s book, Bob Brookmeyer In Conversation, Bob says about Talking: “There are some things that happened in that piece, maybe not audible to the listener, but it happened to me and that will help me in future days.” I think that was his intention with sharing the piece with his students and friends — and now the world — hoping that we’d not only enjoy the piece, but that it might impact us beyond the first listen, and continue the conversation he started.

(Written by Ryan Truesdell, former student of Bob Brookmeyer and manager of the Brookmeyer Musical Estate)

Bob Brookmeyer (b. Kansas City, MO, December 19, 1929; d. New London, NH, December 15, 2011) enjoyed a long and distinguished career as a trombonist, educator, and composer and arranger. Born in Kansas City, Missouri, Brookmeyer began playing clarinet at age 8. His first exposure to jazz—a performance by the Count Basie Orchestra at the Tower Theater—proved to be a formative experience. At age 13, Brookmeyer switched to trombone and, soon after, began to compose, teaching himself piano along the way. He attended the Kansas City Conservatory (now part of the University of Missouri-Kansas City), where he studied piano and composition, and was awarded the Carl Busch Award for Choral Composition (1949). After three years at the Conservatory, Brookmeyer left Kansas City to perform at the Aragon Ballroom in Chicago, where he met and played with such musicians as Tiny Kahn, Al Cohn, and Frank Rosolino.

Following brief service in the US army, in 1952 Brookmeyer moved to New York where he worked as a freelance pianist (and occasionally trombonist), playing in a variety of swing and bebop bands, including those of Tex Beneke, Ray McKinley and Claude Thornhill. He also freelanced with such artists as Coleman Hawkins, Pee Wee Russell, Ben Webster, Charles Mingus, and Teddy Charles. While working with Thornhill, Brookmeyer began playing valve trombone, making him one of the few professionals to favor the instrument above the slide trombone. In 1953, while playing with the Stan Getz Quintet, Brookmeyer was awarded the Downbeat Magazine “New Star Award” for trombone.

From 1954-57, Brookmeyer performed with Gerry Mulligan’s ensembles—first the Gerry Mulligan Quartet (1954), with whom he performed at the Paris Jazz Festival (Paris Concert, Pacific Jazz); and then the sextet (with Zoot Sims, Jon Eardley, Peck Morrison, and Dave Bailey)—appearing on numerous recordings as leader and guest soloist. Brookmeyer left Mulligan’s groups briefly in late 1957 to join an experimental trio with Jimmy Giuffre and Jim Hall (1958), but, in 1960, he rejoined Gerry Mulligan as chief arranger/composer and featured soloist for his Concert Jazz Band (1960-64). During this time, he also played on George Russell’s New York, New York (Impulse, 1959), collaborated with Bill Evans on a two-piano recording (The Ivory Hunters/Double Barrelled Piano, Blue Note Records, 1959); performed with Thelonius Monk in Paris, formed a quintet with co-leader Clark Terry, with whom he received Grammy® and Downbeat awards (1961-67); and worked with such notable jazz musicians as John Coltrane, Count Basie, Pepper Adams, Oscar Pettiford, Ben Webster, Art Blakey, Dizzy Gillespie, Jimmy Jones, and others.

In 1965 Brookmeyer became a founding member of the famed Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Jazz Orchestra, dividing his time between arranging and playing lead trombone. In April of the same year, he joined the Merv Griffin Show as staff musician, but found the work especially dissatisfying. In 1968 he moved to the west coast and took a decade-long break from jazz recording.

From 1968-77, although relatively inactive as a jazz musician, Mr. Brookmeyer worked as a session musician and staff arranger in Los Angeles, playing for motion pictures and television. He came out of retirement in 1978 with the album Back Again (Sonet Productions) and returned to New York. After playing with the Stan Getz Sextet on their European tour (1978), Brookmeyer formed his own quartet and began making new recordings. In 1979 he became musical director of Mel Lewis’s reorganized Jazz Orchestra, was awarded another Grammy® nomination for Arranging and Best Album (Bob Brookmeyer: Composer, Arranger Live at the Village Vanguard, Gryphon), and, in 1980, received his first NEA grant for Jazz Composition.

In the 1980s Mr. Brookmeyer established himself as a prominent educator in the US and internationally. He was appointed to the faculty of the Manhattan School of Music (1988), served as Director of the BMI Composer’s Workshop (1989), and appeared as a clinician at various colleges and universities. In 1991 he moved to Rotterdam, where he organized the World School for New Jazz and taught composition and improvisation at Rotterdam Conservatory. In 1994 he was appointed musical director the Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival Big Band, a worldwide jazz-based ensemble dedicated to new music. Over the next few years, this ensemble evolved into Brookmeyer’s award-winning NewArt Orchestra. In 1996 he was named artistic director of the Composition Workshop at Rhythmic Conservatory in Copenhagen. Returning to the US, in 1997 Brookmeyer began teaching full-time at the New England Conservatory, where he chaired the department of jazz composition and created the NEC’s Jazz Composers’ Workshop Orchestra before his retirement in 2007.

Brookmeyer boasts an extensive discography, appearing both as leader and sideman on dozens of albums, including numerous recordings with US jazz icons. He was a multiple Grammy Award winner and three-time grant recipient for composition from the National Endowment for the Arts. As an internationally recognized composer and arranger, Brookmeyer received commissions from the Netherlands Wind Ensemble, Swedish Radio Symphony, WDR Big Band, Metropole Orchestra in the Netherlands, The Twelve Cellists of the Berlin Philharmonic, Chamber Music America, The American Jazz Orchestra, and the New York Council on the Arts, among others. He was awarded honorary doctorates by the University of Missouri-Kansas City (1991) and the New England Conservatory (2008) and was named a National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master in 2006.

Mr. Brookmeyer’s last recording, Standards, was released a few weeks before his death in 2011. It featured his own NewArt Orchestra with vocal soloist Fay Claassen.