Rob McConnell Story

THE ROB MCCONNELL STORY

THIS IS A TRIBUTE SITE AND NOT AN OFFICIAL SITE, ALTHOUGH MR MCCONNEL

APPROVES OF THE SITE, I AM UNABLE TO COMMENT AS TO HIS AVAILABILITY.

ALSO UNDERSTAND THAT THE BOSS BRASS NO LONGER EXISTS AS A PERMANENT

UNIT. THE LEADER HAS BEEN TRAVELLING OCCASIONALLY AND PERFORMING HIS MUSIC

AS A GUEST WITH BANDS IN THE USA, EUROPE, AUSTRALIA. MAY I SUGGEST THAT CONTACT

BE MADE VIA THE UNION IN TORONTO

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BOSS OF THE BOSS BRASS

Now leader of the fabulous ROB MCCONNELL TENTET

Rob McConnell the Ontario born writer, arranger and valve trombonist at one time disbanded the Boss Brass and moved to California to join Dick Grove, at his School Of Music, as a full time educator. Being away from his beloved Canada and his family proved too much for him and he 'bit the bullet' returned and re-formed. More of that later....

Time wasn't wasted in Los Angeles however and he took every chance offered, to play in a variety of settings and with a few noteable ensembles, including the Bob Florence Limited Edition. When not playing you were likely to see him in the audience at just about any accessible big band gig.
He is now back where he belongs, the band has re-formed, a few new names are in the band and his writing is going apace.

What follows is an update of a feature I prepared for JAZZ JOURNAL INTERNATIONAL, and re-present with permission. It is an attempt at bringing the story uptodate.

Increasing numbers of North American collegiate big bands of U.K. and European ensembles now try to include the music of McConnell in their libraries. The reasons become obvious when you appreciate the technical skills require to compliment the writing with a good performance. There is no doubt in my mind that he is one of 'not enough' contemporary writers and arrangers who have not forgotten that as musicians, they are entertainers and have a responsibility to provide accessible entertainment for their audiences, rather than clever over-written 'head music'. having said that, the music IS complex and does require a certain level of performer to interpret it.

His brand of writing does give the BRASS it's individual style.On those occasions when other writers contribute it is noticeable that the gospel according to Rob is dominant!

He writes outstanding jazz interpretations of standard material, as well as original songs of the highest standard. His music is noted among other things for its melodic content, beautifully written svelt ensembles, highly charged swinging sections, changes of pace and style, and humour.

Some have compared McConnell's style with that of Thad Jones and Mel Lewis. In fact when he heard their band at the Village Vanguard, he said to himself ' this is a great idea, I want one of those'!

Obviously he is flattered by the aforementioned comparison, whether he agrees totally with it or not I don't know. My own opinion is that like other great writers he has incorporated elements of their style into his work rather than gone after mimicking them.

As a busy studio player, McConnell has a track record of work with other groups in every style and situation. He has written for TV and commercials, hates writing to any sort of formula, and says he 'refused' himself out of that sort of work a long time ago.

What sort of a man is he - of comfortable build, he is genial and funny company, well prepared to present a fund of stories over a libation. He also has a habit of talking about himself in the first person... Rob this... Rob that...!

The excellence of the Boss Brass sidemen has conditioned him to certain expectations as and when he fronts other groups, he can lose his sense of humour in pursuit of excellence. This side disappears as soon as the situation resolves.
One thing too rarely mentioned is his impressive talent as a trombonist. He is never happier than when he is free-wheeling on a good standard tune with good musicians.

I'll begin with McConnell discussing the short-lived demise of the Boss Brass in 1988.

'There were a couple of negative things that I could mention, but the positive one was the fact I was looking around for a job and Dick Grove offered me one. I had already done a lot of teaching and education type work with the band.
I had moved out of Toronto a short time and I had felt that I was sort of out of the mainstream of the freelance musician business that I had been in for 25 years or so. I had been busy and I had done well. I felt that my turn was now over and, in any case the business had changed a lot.... electronics and so forth.

The composer/arranger/leaders that hired me were getting older: Some older than me! Some younger! When you're starting out in the business and you're 30, you don't necessarilty hire someone who is 54! I took that as the writing on the wall. I'm not saying it is good or bad, that's just the way it is.

I thought that members of the Boss Brass were getting older too and perhaps some changes would have to be made to freshen up the band or whatever. Moving seemed easier than doing that! I want to continue working and be in music. I thought moving to L.A. would be a good idea.

At that time the Brass had been inexistance for 21 years. I had had a band before that, with the same guys, a 15 piece, no saxophones. This was just a kind of music business idea. It was to do with the 'Canadian Content' rule. We recorded two to three minute airplay records, hit parade covers.

I always sneaked a few things onto these records unbeknown to the producer. I recall one big white lie. I told the producer that Herbie Hancocks Dolphin Dance would have some hit parade potential. It had no parade potential whatever, I just liked the tune and so put it on the record. I did play it for the producer first saying ' isn't that a pretty record ?' He agreed so it wasn't an out and out lie. He had the choice! I was always doing things like that. The things I do best are always connected to jazz.

I suppose the pool of musicians in Toronto was, at the time, fairly small, so you did tend to work with the same musicians a lot. I mean at any time in the last 25 years, if you wanted a lead trumpet there would only be about three contenders, and the one way above the other two would be Arnie Chycoski. It is no insult to any of the other players, they would say the same.

Humber College in Toronto has an extremely good music programme, it's better now than it ever has been. One or two have come into my band. The spark plug at Humber is Ron Collier. Ron was probably the prize student of the late Gordon Delamont. I was the other one! In fact if you see anything similar in any of the bands, the common factor is Gordon Delamont. Pat Sullivan was the other student.

There are very few musicians in Canada who have not studied with Gordon. I don't think he taught anything really different, it was a psychological thing. He got me really interested in doing music with a certain attitude, the same with Ronnie, Pat and hundreds of others. He wasn't at a school, he had a studio at his house. Gordon was a trumpet player, his father ran a very famous brass band called the Kitsalano (B.C.) Boys band. Arnie, Ron and Phil Nimmons were in the band, so there is a connection there, this was in Vancouver by the way.

When the Brass was rolling along for the 20 years we had the best fans and the best jobs in town. All the recording we did was in Toronto. On the occasions when we played for two weeks at a time, that was in Toronto. I know we couldn't have done this anywhere else, for that long and do business. Certainly we made more money there than any other place we played. Canada, the Canadian administration AND the Canadian people have been very good to us. We need less money there because we all lived there. After the job was over, we just went home. When we played at a club in California, we had to get there. We had a lot of help (I mean money) from the Candian Government,.the Province of Ontario and so on, on all our trips. The travelling costs took care of half of our money!

The Boss Brass never rehearsed on an ongoing basis. Our busiest year was 1984. Counting a job as a day, we worked over 60 times in one year. That, for that band was good. Of course if you want to take a negative view, we were not working for 300 or so days!

Going back to when we changed from the original Boss Brass, the Canadian Talent Library recordings were never going to satisfy me or the band members for very long. We were jazz people and jazz kept creeping into the book. Actually we were playing club dates in Toronto and we would never play any of the stuff we had recorded, too short, no solos and so on.

The band was getting a lot of airplay because of the Canadian Content rules which ensured that the Canadian product was showcased on the air. The ruling gave us our record dates. the albums were O.K., they weren't meant to hurt you. They were good jobs for me, sit down, write 10 charts and go and record them!

Musically I became dissatisfied with the format. the band would get dates and you had to get a little more meat to play. I thought that this 'all brass' band would not do at all.So.... I just added the saxophones, and it became, with no apologies, by osmosis... a JAZZ BAND. The name BOSS BRASS just sort of hung over, by the way.

Our first album (with the new format) was called THE JAZZ ALBUM. the reason for it being called that was to differentiate from what we had done before. BODY AND SOUL was on it and PORTRAIT OF JENNY. Beautiful work by Guido Basso (flugelhorn).

People, musicians and the public, say they can recognise my writing. I don't, I just do it and hope for the best. Probably there is a style involved, or some sort of 'Rob's personality' thing in my writing. When I am writing I am trying to get away from my 'style'. So it's not a thing I do on purpose, in fact if my next few charts come out on record and people say the writing is the same, I'll be disappointed.

My writing is hard for the players. I'm challenging the musicians I suppose, but I do find that they play best when the gauntlet is thrown down. It's worked so far, there has been nothing I write that the band couldn't play. I purposely keep writing harder and harder stuff.

The listener might say "boy that certainly sounded good", " I haven't heard a sax soli that hard" or " When the band plays without the rhythm section wasn't the time good" and so on. Well, they are all very good musicians. I guess not so many people have the opportunity to write that way and get it recorded. Actually it should not be a problem here, in Chicago, New York or anywhere.

I think there were a few things unique about the band in Toronto. There was the fact that not too many knew of Guido Basso or Don Thompson. Perhaps they knew Ed Bickert from his work with Paul Desmond. There was Terry Clarke too.... all good musicians and some that had never recorded before. Some of us had performed with Phil Nimmons' band, but his records were never distributed around the world like mine.

I can't see that people are using my ideas. All I have done is steal from the best of Mulligan, Brookmeyer, Thad Jones, Billy May, Gary McFarland, Oliver Nelson, Bob and Willis (Florence and Holman).

With my years of listening, I suppose I wouldn't write the way I do without having listened to Holmans charts for Kenton. Everything has influenced me. I am just a cornucopia of all that stuff.

I recall listening to Diane Schurr's album TIMELESS. I love her singing, the charts are by Grusin, May, Pat Williams, Mandel and Lubbock. It's on GRP, all state of the art charts and the best about at that time. The influence of that album shows up on at least one thatI did in '88. It's called BOSS OF THE BOSS BRASS. It's with an orchestra, no brass in it, not really a jazz album.

We did an album for Concord with Mel Torme. It was done at once, no over-dubs or anything like that. He's enjoyed the band for some time. Mel was excellent as always. It's not a band album, it's Torme's album, it's good we enjoyed doing it. It's hard adding a vocalist to a band that size though.

The first time the band came out of Canada was in 1981 for the Monterey Jazz Festival. We played at Carmellos in Los Angeles, a lot of musicians came to see us... we did god business. We also did a gig at Concerts By The Sea, it was videoed. I don't have a copy, actually I don't know where you can get it.

My career recently has been more and more visits to colleges in a teacher, clinician, guest role. It's been the best work I have had. Getting Rob is a bargain. I am able to do a number of things. I can run the band, teach arranging, I can play my horn, accompany on a piano. I am not a man of huge capabilities but many of them'.

(Author's note.. Rob has since travelled to Europe, toured with the Danish Radio Big Band, been the artiste in residence at Leeds School Of Music in the U.K., broadcasted with the BBC Big Band, toured with Gerry Mulligan. I am pleased to suggest that one of Rob's more enjoyable interludes was as guest with the MIDLAND YOUTH JAZZ ORCHESTRA in Coventry (UK)., not to mention the story-telling at MYJO's director's house post concert. It becomes more and more apparent to me that the quality time Rob has with his family, back home becomes harder and harder to put aside for travelling).

Back to Rob and the plot...' The high spots in my career were my trips to California. I did not enjoy the television taping, that was terribly hard work. the travelling was difficult, a 22 piece band meant 40 people on the road. So getting them and the instruments was hard work. Sometimes I felt I was in the travel business and no longer a musician. there have been great times: the Toronto Festival with Oscar Peterson, the concert with Mel Torme, the Playboy Festival. The band was playing so well. Guido doing CLOSE ENOUGH FOR LOVE, moments like that when the hair stood up on the back of my neck.

We had a lot of fun on club dates in California. At Dontes we've had the band all laughing so hard we could not play. I try to remember moments like that.

When I am asked which albums of mine I like the best, I have to say it is always the last one. I have a particular fondness for BOSS BRASS AND WOODS with Phil Woods. Phil Woods would be the highlight of any band's work.

I've recorded around 27 albums including some with SINGERS UNLIMITED, THE HI-LOs, OLD FRIENDS NEW MUSIC (SEXTET) with Lanny Morgan, Bill Berry and drummer, the late Nick Ceroli. Nick was wonderful, he played with the Boss Brass on two or three occasions. Everybody in the world thought that Nick was a wonderful drummer.

When I am asked 'Rob... what do you really want to do?' Well I really want to be in charge.'

Recent recordings by Rob McConnell have resulted from appearances with the German SWR Big Band and French Big Band the name of which escapes me at the moemnt. The German recording is oustanding.

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John Killoch