Trumpet-playing professors seek to teach, learn while making music

Four Other Brothers includes from left, Randall Reyman, Todd Kelly, Andy Cheetham and John Cooper.

BOB FALLSTROM H&R Community News Editor
It's not everyday that a music professor get serious schooling in the art of jazz trumpet playing. 

But that's exactly what happens each time members of Four Other Brothers trumpet quartet get together to play.

“I love this band,” said John Cooper, director of jazz studies at Western Illinois University, Macomb.

“The literature is very challenging, and to play it well means serious study.”

Four Other Brothers includes Cooper, Randall Reyman, trumpet professor, coordinator of brass and director of jazz activities at Millikin University in Decatur; Andrew Cheetham, trumpet professor at Eastern Illinois University, Charleston; and Todd Kelly, trumpet professor and director of jazz studies at Bradley University, Peoria.

Reyman writes the arrangements. His goal is to represent important jazz trumpeters of the past such as Louis Armstrong, Bix Beiderbecke, Cootie Williams, Bunny Berigan, Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie, Lee Morgan, Clifford Brown, Freddie Hubbard and Kenny Wheeler. In almost all of his arrangements, he includes a portion of the represented payer's recorded and improvised solo, arranged in four-part harmony.

“In other words, what I do is arrange the melody, save solo space for each of us and then write a section based on the actual transcription of the solo Louis, Bix or Miles or whoever played,” he said. “That makes the arrangement a challenge. It's a lot of fun and also makes the arrangement strongly connected to the player we are representing.”


During the past few years, the band has performed at the Bix Beiderbecke Festival in Davenport, Iowa; the Illinois Music Educators Conference in Peoria; the Midwest Band and Orchestra Clinic in Chicago; and the Juvae Jazz Society in Decatur. For shows and concerts, a rhythm section, piano, bass and drums, is added to round out the sound. The quartet also is scheduled for appearances at Truman State University, Kirksville, Mo., on March 27; the Madison (Wis.) Jazz Society on March 29; and at Lock Stock and Barrel in Decatur on May 2.

read more: http://herald-review.com/entertainment/music/4a4cd5d6-2ad8-5c99-9217-4f533e1206c0.html