Jazz icon Sam Rivers dead at 88

Joy was the word that resurfaced again and again when musicians and friends remembered Sam Rivers, a saxophonist, flutist and composer whose long list of credits included work with the legendary Miles Davis.

Rivers, an internationally known jazz icon and fixture on the Orlando music scene for roughly two decades, died Monday night from pneumonia, his daughter confirmed Tuesday. He was 88.

Until September, Rivers had continued his weekly open rehearsals with his powerful big band, the Rivbea Orchestra, at the Orlando musician's union hall.

“Music was his life, music is what kept him alive," said his daughter Monique Rivers Williams of Apopka, who also handled her father's concert bookings and learned from him the joy of making music. “My father, in my eyes, was on vacation all his life. He used to tell me, 'I'm working, but I'm loving every minute of it.' Retirement was not in his vocabulary. 'Why do we even have that word,' he used to ask me, 'there should be no such thing.'"

Members of Orlando's tightknit musical community also recalled the joy of Rivers' work. When news of his death surfaced on social-networking sites Monday night, a small group gathered to listen to his music at Will's Pub. On Tuesday, the morning show on independent radio station 91.5 FM (WPRK) played his music and interviewed Anthony Cole, a multi-instrumentalist and longtime member of Rivers' ensembles.

Cole talked about how he at first was intimidated to play saxophone next to such a great musician: “Suddenly, I'm onstage with him with a horn around my neck," said Cole, adding that Rivers encouraged him to explore outside of traditional musical structures.

“That's what Sam's thing was," Cole said. “It's a good thing to know the grid, but that was Sam's thing: to make a joyful noise."

The son of a church musician, Rivers was born in Oklahoma in 1923 and raised in Chicago and Little Rock, Ark. He started piano lessons as a child and later played trombone before settling on the tenor saxophone. Taking inspiration from jazz heroes such as Coleman Hawkins, among others, he moved to Boston and performed with Herb Pomeroy's big band, an ensemble that also included future music producer Quincy Jones. In 1964, he moved to New York, where he was hired by Miles Davis.

As his reputation spread, Rivers played with a diverse array of musicians ranging from jazz icons Dizzy Gillespie and Cecil Taylor to blues musicians T-Bone Walker and John Lee Hooker.

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Although considered avant garde, the music on these important records....

 Although considered avant garde, the music on these important records evinced a thoughtful classicism that was a refreshing departure from the hedonistic hollering that was increasingly dominating the free jazz movement. He would later work in Cecil Taylors Unit with Jimmy Lyons and Andrew Cyrille, describing the encounter "as one of the exhilarating experiences of my career."

Similarly exciting was Rivers' intuitive and inventive trio, featuring Dave Holland on bass and Barry Altschul on drums, which would spontaneously create inspired music for hours on end as the leader moved from tenor to soprano saxophone, to flute, to piano and back, punctuating the music with his patented whooping exclamations of joy.

Just as important as his creativity as a musician, was Rivers' role as the patriarch of the New York City downtown loft jazz scene in the 70s. He was the proprietor (with his wife Bea) of the world famous Studio Rivbea on Bond Street, in what is now called Noho.

"I was just there at the right time," he humbly opines, "because it just so happens there was an influx of musicians they all decided to come to New York at the same time. I had a performance space where I was just rehearsing, but then I started giving concerts and we were known all around the world."

Wildflowers, a five record set, recorded during a single week of performances, is a Who's Who of the free jazz movement of the day, documenting the importance of the venue.

The musicians performing on the discs included, among others, Ahmed Abdullah, Hamiet Bluiett, Anthony Braxton, Marion Brown, Dave Burrell, Jerome Cooper, Andrew Cyrille, Olu Dara, Julius Hemphill, Oliver Lake, Jimmy Lyons, Ken McIntyre, Roscoe Mitchell, David Murray, Sunny Murray, Leo Smith, and Henry Threadgill, many of whom were barely known in the U.S. at the time.

Not long after the release of the records, Rivers closed the Rivbea and moved to New Jersey. He remembers, "I stopped doing it in New York because once the guys got known, the clubs started hiring them.

I couldn't pay the kind of money the clubs were because I wasn't really charging. I would ask for a donation. I wasn't selling all this whiskey. If you wanted a beer you'd bring it yourself."

During the 80's, Rivers lead several progressive electric quartets featuring guitarists Kevin Eubanks, Darryl Thompson and Ed Cherry. It was the latter's membership in his quartet that led Rivers to a somewhat surprising stint with Dizzy Gillespie.

"Ed Cherry was in my band and Dizzy called him, so I just called because Ed Cherry said that Dizzy was making up a new band," Rivers recalls. "I just called up Dizzy. I said, Merry Christmas, Dizzy, [it was Christmas], if you ever need a tenor player give me a call. He said, 'What's your name. What's your number?' And the next week he called me.

It was the start of a new thing. Ignacio Berroa on drums. John Lee on bass. Ed Cherry, myself and Dizzy. Very good group, an excellent group, I loved playing with them. I was also with the United Nations Band, Dizzy's orchestra. I stayed with Dizzy for four years."

It was during his tenure with Gillespie that Rivers relocated to Orlando, Florida. "We were traveling all around, and I could have gone anywhere," he remembers. "We were planning to leave New York, so I could have gone to New Mexico or Arizona or California, you know, or Seattle. I had offers from all of those places to teach.

But I didn't want to teach, and the musicians down here they said we have enough musicians, if you want to come down here, there's a big band waiting for you with your music. And that's why I came here; the musicians were so good. All the musicians in my orchestra, my jazz orchestra, are all professors of music. They all teach here. It's quite an organization. I mean, I'm very fortunate because I can bring in all my music, anything I write, and these musicians are able to play it the first time down. So, I mean it's a very, very, very great experience for me."

Rivers more traditional orchestral jazz is documented on two Grammy nominated RCA compact discs, Inspiration and Culmination , by his Rivbea All-Star Orchestra. Aurora, by the Orlando orchestra, is more representative of his current work.

The nucleus of both ensembles is Rivers' trio of the past 12 years, with Doug Mathews and Anthony Cole; a group he proudly describes as "unique" in the history of jazz. The union of the three multi-instrumentalists is the most versatile, small group, making music today, sometimes replicating the style of the leader's earlier trios and resembling the World Saxophone Quartet or Cecil Taylors Unit. Rivers explains, "Doug is a classical musician.

 He reads on bass clarinet, on double bass violin, also on bass guitar and drums. Anthony plays drums; he also plays tenor saxophone and sometimes we have compositions for two pianos with Anthony and myself. And then sometimes, Anthony can play the electric bass guitar and Doug plays drums. So we have it all covered. It's never been done before. And when were finished, they know its unique. They'll never hear anything like it again their lifetime. Unless they hear me again."

In a recent concert in San Diego, trombonist George Lewis and pianist Anthony Davis joined the group. An all star cast will play at an upcoming engagement at the Iridium. The saxophonist, who appeared on Reggie Workman's Summit Conference and Cerebral Caverns discs, and with Jason Moran on his Black Stars date, would have preferred to perform with his own group, but is nonetheless excited about the appearance.

"You don't need compositions for the trio," he says. "You really don't need any music at all, but we do have some themes. We have some melodies we will improvise on and some free things, also. There's no real set program. We like to surprise ourselves, too. I haven't the faintest idea whats going to happen - I like it that way. I look forward to it because I dont know what's going to happen. It's far more challenging than if I knew what was going to happen, then it might even get boring."

There's little chance of boredom happening with Rivers on the bandstand. Although he has already changed the course of jazz, he continues to look to the future.

"One day I'm going to get a grant and I'm going to show everybody," he says. "They give these grants to people and they get these grants and you never hear from them again. I feel that they probably know that I would do something with it. I would create a scene like I did in New York on my own money, like Studio Rivbea. I would like to get a grant so I could change the course of the music, preserve some of the music that creative musicians are doing... because I know how to do it."

Sam Rivers / Rivbea Music Productions
PLEASE CONTACT MONIQUE RIVERS WILLIAMS
803 Park Lake Place, Maitland, FL. 32751

some moments during the rehearsal of the Rivbea All-Star Orchestra with many famous New York jazz musicians, led by Sam Rivers; September 1998; shot by filmmaker Alan Roth; also check out the Sam Rivers festival at: www.wkcr.org
Also: www.insideoutintheopen.net

At 85, Sam Rivers Creates A Scene In Orlando

photo: by Getty images

When you think of Orlando, Fla., Disney World is probably the first thing that comes to mind. Odds are you don't think of progressive big band jazz. Yet that's exactly what Sam Rivers wants. Rivers is a giant of modern jazz. His distinctive saxophone and flute playing made themselves heard in the mid-1960s in Boston and New York. In the '70s, he helped create Manhattan's Loft Jazz scene — inviting some of the era's most innovative musicians and their fans into his home for performances, and spurring others to do the same. Now 85, Rivers is tilling similar soil in Orlando. He's thin — in the past year he's gone through hip surgery and fought pneumonia. His eyes are hidden behind thick-framed glasses, but his face glows with energy as he gets ready to take the stage at the Plaza Theater in Orlando. "I'm ready when I come here," Rivers says. "I warm up at home, you know. So I always look forward to it 'cause it's always a different performance. [I] hear it differently, too." The audience of about 50 is made up of students, older jazz fans and people just curious to hear and see Rivers' big band. Writer Jennifer Greenhill Taylor has been coming to hear Rivers for a decade.

"Sam's music is incredibly powerful," says Taylor, "because Sam himself is an incredibly powerful and enigmatic kind of person and his music is like that. It's so intricate, and there's all these conversations going on up there and the musicians are having such a good time." Valencia Community College Student D.J. Severence came out to hear Rivers for the first time — because it was a requirement for his music appreciation class. "I just wanted to check him out, really," Severence says. "It's pretty crazy — it's like, I don't know, it just changed my opinion on music in general. The way he puts out jazz convinces me to look more into jazz." No Passive Listeners Rivers wants reactions to his music. "The main thing is you want to emote. You want the audience to feel what you're doing," Rivers says. "They don't know what notes are; all they do is feel. I want to reach the audience. I want them to appreciate it. I don't want them to sit there stone cold and leave. I want them to leave there smiling and happy like they do." Rivers began to move listeners in the 1960s. His powerful tenor sax was featured on Miles Davis' Miles in Tokyo, Tony Williams' Lifetime and Rivers' own Blue Note debut, Fuschia Swing Song, all recorded in 1964.

In 1970, he began to foster a new scene. He opened up his loft to performances and called it Studio Rivbea — the name combined Rivers with Beatrice, the name of Rivers' first wife. It was around this time that fellow saxophonist Hamiet Bluiett met Rivers. "I walked in and told him my name was Bluiett and I play baritone saxophone. So he said, 'OK Bluiett, yeah good, good. I got a band. Tuesday night. Be there.' So I showed up and that was about it," Bluiett recalls. Studio Rivbea was one of the focal points for what came to be called the Loft Jazz scene. Bluiett says the space — and Rivers — attracted all sorts of creative people. Sam has always been like a teacher, you know. He had all this experience and knew a lot of stuff, so I was glad to be around him," Bluiett says. "It was mainly Sam. Sam is a magnet within himself — he writes all this music and is such a tremendous character; if he puts on anything you want to show up to be a part of it, and be in it, and see what it is going on." Going Where The Climate Suits His Clothes

The success of the loft scene also led to its decline, as real estate investors cashed in by developing cheap properties that were suddenly hip. So Rivers went to school — teaching at Dartmouth and Cornish colleges, among others. He also toured with Dizzy Gillespie's United Nations Band, which brought him to Orlando. He started thinking about relocating. "No. 1 because of the musicians available," says Rivers. "Two is because of the weather. I came up in Chicago and Boston and New York and I've always hated the cold weather. This is the first time — in my old age — I've got a chance to enjoy decent weather."  Rivers was able to draw on some of the musicians teaching at area universities — and working at Disney World — to form the Rivbea Orchestra in 1991. Saxophonist Danny Jordan was one of them. He says having Rivers in Orlando transformed the area's music scene. "It was either Dixieland, or bebop, or fusion," Jordan says. "And each club would sort of purport itself to play either one of those styles of music. And Sam came to town and broke everyone's conception of what was acceptable and commercially viable in town." For his part, Rivers says living and working in central Florida has not lessened his sense of connection with artists and musical collaborators present or past. The room where he practices is lined with photos. He points to one of him with Spanish artist Joan Miro, who gave him a painting; another shows him with Dizzy Gillespie.

His house has a nice view of Park Lake. But Rivers has drawn all of the window blinds in his music room. "This is where I do all my work," Rivers says. "Looking at the lake and all those things, that's too distracting. So I'd rather be in here where there's just nice plain walls where I don't start daydreaming because of the beautiful atmosphere." The room has a computer with music software on it, but Rivers still composes most of his tunes by hand. And at 85, he still practices two hours a day. He says that in central Florida, he's experiencing the most creative time in his life. "I'm getting more ideas now — I think I'm far more mentally inspired creatively than I was when I was like 50 or maybe even 40," Rivers insists. "I have so many more ideas. I have so much more knowledge. It's great, it's sort of like the universe: The more you see out there, the more there is. I don't expect to ever reach my full achievement. I don't expect to ever have that. Until I pass there's gonna be, like there's always more, you know?" Sam Rivers is happy to spend most of his time in Florida. But he wants to squeeze in one last international tour. And Rivers is also looking for some institution to give a home to his life's work of more than 300 compositions — before they overwhelm the shelves and filing cabinets that have begun to spread beyond his music room.
by Mark Simpson
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=112554824&ft=1&f=1039

Sam Rivers - Beatrice

Fuchsia Swing album, same song. Personel:
Sam Rivers: Tenor Sax
Jaki Byard: Piano
Ron Carter: Bass
Tony Williams:Drums