Two legendary jazz arrangers and composers, Bob Brookmeyer and Bill Holman, will visit the Eastman School of Music during the first week of March.
Brookmeyer will be in residence for a program of his music to be presented by the Eastman New Jazz Ensemble, directed by Dave Rivello, at 8 p.m. Tuesday, March 1, in Kilbourn Hall. Holman will also be in residence for a concert by the Eastman Studio Orchestra, directed by Bill Dobbins, in Kodak Hall on Friday, March 4, at 8 p.m.
The two illustrious guest artists will present workshops and master classes through the week, and will both be present at the Jazz Department’s weekly Jazz Forum on Wednesday, March 2, at 11:35 a.m. to discuss their lives in music and respond to questions.
As a valve trombonist, Brookmeyer is considered to be one of the world’s outstanding jazz performers, and has collaborated with numerous jazz greats such as Coleman Hawkins, Stan Getz, Pee Wee Russell, Gerry Mulligan, and Charles Mingus. Since the 1980s, Brookmeyer has worked extensively in America and Europe as an arranger, educator, composer, performer and conductor. He started a radical new school in Holland to teach improvisation and composition and founded the New Art Orchestra. From 1997 to 2007, Brookmeyer taught at the New England Conservatory and created the NEC’s Jazz Composers’ Workshop Orchestra.
Known for his unique and complex arrangements, Holman’s career milestones were recognized in 2010 with the title of NEA Jazz Master, the nation’s highest honor in jazz. Since 1949, Holman’s career as composer and saxophonist has included collaborations with artists such as Brookmeyer, Stan Kenton, Charlie Barnet, Mel Lewis, Count Basie, Woody Herman, Tony Bennett, Natalie Cole, and Sarah Vaughan. He has received 14 Grammy nominations and won three Grammy Awards: Best Instrumental Arrangement (1987), Best Instrumental Composition (1995), and Best Instrumental Arrangement (1997). He was voted “Best Arranger” in the JazzTimes Readers’ Poll four times and received the “Arranger of the Year” award three times in DownBeat magazine’s Readers’ Poll and Critics’ Poll.
The Eastman Studio Orchestra is an ensemble that combines the personnel of the Eastman Jazz Ensemble with a small complement of strings, woodwinds, harp and percussions, modeled after the Netherlands Metropole Orchestra in Hilversum. Directed by Bill Dobbins, the 50-piece group will perform works by Holman and by Michael Pendowski, a doctoral student in jazz studies at the Eastman School of Music.
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Calendar Listings
Tuesday, March 1
Eastman New Jazz Ensemble. Music of Bob Brookmeyer.
8 p.m.
Kilbourn Hall, 26 Gibbs St.
Free
Friday, March 4
Eastman Studio Orchestra. Bill Dobbins, director; guest artists Bill Holman, saxophone, and Bob Brookmeyer, trombone.
8 p.m.
Kodak Hall at Eastman Theatre, 60 Gibbs St.
Free