Robert Edward "Bob" Brookmeyer (December 19, 1929 – December 15, 2011) was an American jazz valve trombonist, pianist, arranger, and composer who was long considered a very advanced arranger whose writing was influenced by modern classical music.
Brookmeyer was born in Kansas City, and learned the clarinet as a child. When he was 11, his father took him to hear Count Basie's big band, which he would later describe as an almost orgasmic "body-thrill" that changed a predominantly unhappy childhood. Brookmeyer played the trombone and piano in high school – and after three years at the Kansas City Conservatory, worked in jam sessions in Chicago as a pianist, was drafted into the army, and from 1951 performed as a freelance pianist and trombonist in a variety of swing and bebop bands, including the Claude Thornhill ensemble that had inspired the composer/arranger Gil Evans and Miles Davis's famous Birth of the Cool sessions. He was also part of small groups led by Stan Getz, Jimmy Giuffre, and Gerry Mulligan in the 1950s.
During the 1950s and 1960s, Brookmeyer played in New York clubs, on television (including being part of the house band for The Merv Griffin Show), and on studio recordings, as well as arranging for Ray Charles and others. In the early 1960s, Brookmeyer joined flugelhorn player Clark Terry in a band that achieved some success. In February 1965, Brookmeyer and Terry appeared together on BBC2's Jazz 625.
Brookmeyer moved to Los Angeles in 1968 and became a full-time studio musician. He spent 10 years on the West Coast and developed a serious alcohol problem. After he overcame this, he returned to New York. Brookmeyer became the musical director of the Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Orchestra in 1979, although he had not composed any music for a decade.
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.
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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.
In June 2005, Brookmeyer joined ArtistShare and announced a project to fund an upcoming third album featuring his New Art Orchestra. The resulting Grammy-nominated CD, titled Spirit Music, was released in 2006. Brookmeyer was named a National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master in the same year. His eighth Grammy Award nomination was for an arrangement from the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra's album, Forever Lasting, shortly before his death. That same album was also nominated in the 57th Annual Grammy Awards for the category of Best Large Jazz Ensemble Album; the CD was entirely made up of Brookmeyer's compositions.
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. 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.
On December 15, 2011, Brookmeyer died in his sleep at a hospital near his home in Grantham, New Hampshire; the cause was congestive heart failure. He passed just a month after releasing the album Standards via the ArtistShare website, and only three days shy of his 82nd birthday.
(Edited from Wikipedia, bobbrookmeyer.com., The Guardian & AllMusic