School of Rock
Random article All articles A–Z
2 languages

Roswell Rudd

From HitStory, the pop encyclopedia of School of Rock · Artist

Roswell Rudd was born in 1935 in Sharon, Connecticut, and died in 2017 in Kerhonkson, New York. He was an American trombonist and composer. He studied at Yale, where in the mid-1950s he played in Eli's Chosen Six, a student band in the exuberant traditional jazz style. That band recorded two albums, one of them for Columbia. What he learned there with rags and stomps he carried into his later collaborations with Archie Shepp, Cecil Taylor, John Tchicai and Steve Lacy.

Music and breakthrough

From 1962 he worked a great deal with Shepp. In the 1960s he could be heard on free jazz recordings, such as those of the New York Art Quartet, the soundtrack of the 1964 film New York Eye and Ear Control and the album Communications by the Jazz Composer's Orchestra. He also played with Don Cherry, Larry Coryell, Pharoah Sanders and Gato Barbieri. With Lacy he recorded the music of Thelonious Monk.

Influence

Rudd was also an ethnomusicologist. He taught the subject at Bard College and the University of Maine and for decades worked on and off for Alan Lomax on his projects Cantometrics and Global Jukebox. In 2000 and 2001 he travelled to Mali, which led to the 2001 album MALIcool with the kora player Toumani Diabaté. In 2005 he recorded Blue Mongol with the Mongolian Buryat Band. In this way he linked the trombone of jazz with music from all over the world.

Listening

Listening tip. Listen to a recording by the New York Art Quartet and notice the trombone, which now roars and then sounds like a Dixieland player. Can you hear the tradition beneath the freedom?

Discography

Studio albums

In School of Rock

The chapters, maps and magazine stories of School of Rock are currently available in Dutch only.

See also

Categories: Artists