Chicago Loves Bobby Broom

SOURCE: ALL ABOUT JAZZ PUBLICITY, Published: 2014-02-13
By Don Howze
When it comes to jazz, Bobby Broom is the quintessential jazz guitarist and composer. Like Wynton Marsalis, Broom stands true to the history and culture of the founding pioneers of the jazz genre.

Broom's style of performing with the same delicate strumming and interpretation made popular by legendary jazz guitarists Wes Montgomery and Les Paul, has made him one of Chicago's favorite artists.

Born in Harlem, raised on New York City's Upper West Side and later becoming a seasoned performer and music educator in Chicago, Broom has embraced his musical experiences from two of the top urban cities nurturing the original jazz sound.

Sonny Rollins, the great tenor saxophonist who Broom played for twelve years during the period of 1982 to 1987 and 2005 to 2010, told DownBeat Magazine that, “Bobby is one of my favorite musicians. He explains why I like the guitar. He's got a strong musical sixth sense."

Thirty years into his distinguished, wide-ranging career in jazz, Bobby Broom is relishing in a style that personifies his own perspective in his musical journey. As a 16 year old prodigy attending New York's High School of Music and Art, Broom performed several nights a week with Charlie Parker's pianists Al Haig and Walter Bishop, Jr..

In 1977, Broom played at Carnegie Hall in a concert with Sonny Rollins and special guest ((Donald Byrd}}. Today, at 53 years of age, Bobby has received the respect and admiration from jazz greats and critics.

“Broom has one of the few truly recognizable styles among modern guitarists, and one of the most satisfying solo concepts in mainstream jazz," wrote critic Neil Tesser in the Chicago Jazz Music Examiner. “Every modern jazz guitarist in Chicago is indebted to Bobby Broom," wrote guitarist Jeff Parker.
Read more: http://news.allaboutjazz.com/news.php?id=108494#.UwDKMHnSz9s

Bobby Broom was a young teenager when he first heard Thelonious Monk’s piano playing

Bobby Broom was a young teenager when he first heard Thelonious Monk’s piano playing. He had a copy of Bird and Diz, the classic 1950 album on which Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie were joined by Monk, Curly Russell, and Buddy Rich. Within a few years, while attending New York’s fabled High School of Music and Art during the mid-’70s, Bobby was playing some of Monk’s compositions.

“His classic tunes, like ‘Straight, No Chaser,’ ‘Well, You Needn’t,’ and ‘’Round Midnight,’ are required,” the guitarist says. “There are about five or six of them that you must play. They’re part of the jazz canon. Aside from that, I adore both his music and personal style. He is such an important figure in jazz across the board, as a player, a composer, and a soloist.”

Bobby Broom Plays for Monk, the Chicago-based musician’s latest release on the Origin Records label, features him performing eight of the legendary pianist’s compositions, along with two popular standards ”Harry Warren’s “Lulu’s Back in Town” and Jerome Kern’s “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes” that were part of Monk’s repertoire. The guitarist is joined by Dennis Carroll, his bassist for the past 18 years, and by Kobie Watkins, his drummer for the past seven.
 
“I was trying to maintain the essence and the spirit of the music and do so without replicating idiosyncrasies of his playing, or being too overly concerned with making chord voicings sound exactly like he did,” Broom says of the CD. “I’m more interested in capturing the spirit of the music and doing it in the spirit that I and my musicians bring to it. I think we all share a similar jazz perspective with Monk. So that was the most important thing to me” finding a way to convey a natural common ground.”

Complete on http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/musician.php?id=11903


Chicago's Bobby Broom Trio, with Kobie Watkins (drums) and Dennis Carroll (bass), playing "D's Blues" in a music video produced and directed by Mark Haynes.

Bobby Broom Plays For Monk

http://www.bobbybroom.com presents the new Origin recording "Bobby Broom Plays Monk" featuring Bobby on guitar, Dennis Carroll on bass, and Kobie Watkins on drums. Bobby Broom (born January 18, 19...

Bobby Broom Trio

Broom's trio,
Dennis Carroll on bass
Kobie Watkins on drums,
plays Thelonious Monk's In Walked Bud.

Bobby Broom will Launch Tribute Thelonius Monk

In next the 16 to June, the stamp “Origin”, hosted in Seattle, will launch the album “Bobby Broom Plays will be Monk”, a tribute for the star guides, pianista and composer Thelonius Monk carried through for the guitarist Bobby Broom (in the photo) with its trio formed for the stock exchange operator Dennis Carroll and the baterista Kobie Watkins. Broom more is known as guitarist of long time of the band of Sonny Rollins, but it has, also, recorded as leader for stamps as Arista, Criss Cross, Delmark, Premonition and, more recently, Origin. In it he was recorded, in 2007, “Song and Dance”, where Broom interpreted songs of the Beatles, Leon Russell, amongst others. In 2008, a guided record more in the jazzística direction, “The Way I Play”. All its records in the Origin had been carried through with its regular trio, that if presents in a restaurant of Illinois has about 12 years. Broom, with its band of Chicago, “Deep Blue Organ Trio”, has recorded a series of albums for the Delmark.

“Bobby Broom Plays will be Monk” is not the first album where a guitar trio, low e battery interprets the deeply pianística and harmonic prickly music of Monk. In the passed year, Peter Bernstein recorded Monk with Doug Weiss and Bill Stewart in recently reactivated Xanadu stamp.
This record of Broom presents a layer with an artistic work that relembra of the LP “Monk's launched Music” in 1957. Chosen musics are: “Work,” “Evidence,” “Reflections,” “Bemsha Swing,” “Ask Me Now,” “Ruby, My Dear,” “Rhythm-a-ning,” “In Walked Bud,” “Lulu's Back in Town,” and “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes.”
Source: JazzTimes

Sonny Rollins - Strode Rode

http://www.sonnyrollins.com presents warm up, sound check and performance by the saxophone legend, Sonny Rollins, and his original, "Strode Rode," first recorded on Saxophone Colossus.
Sonny Rollins - Tenor
Clifton Anderson - Trombone
Bobby Broom - Guitar
Bob Cranshaw - Bass
Kobie Watkins - Drums
Victor See-Yuen - Percussion