Roswell Rudd

Biography

Rudd was born in Sharon, Connecticut. He attended The Hotchkiss School and graduated from Yale University, where he had played with Eli's Chosen Six, a dixieland band of Yale students that Rudd joined in the mid-'50s. The sextet played the boisterous trad jazz style of the day and recorded two albums, including one for Columbia. His landmark collaborations with Cecil Taylor, Archie Shepp, John Tchicai and Steve Lacy grew out of the lessons learned while playing rags and stomps for drunken college kids in Connecticut.

Rudd later taught ethnomusicology at Bard College and the University of Maine. On and off for a period of three decades, Roswell Rudd assisted Alan Lomax with his world music song style (Cantometrics) and Global Jukebox projects, and the wealth of information on the music of this planet that he absorbed inspired him to collaborate beyond the periphery of jazz or even of western music.

In the 1960s, Rudd participated in key free jazz recordings. Highlights include work with the New York Art Quartet; on the soundtrack recording for Michael Snow's 1964 film New York Eye and Ear Control; the Michael Mantler & Carla Bley 1968 Jazz Composer's Orchestra's Communications album featuring Cecil Taylor; and collaborations with Don Cherry, Pharoah Sanders, Larry Coryell and Gato Barbieri. A major factor in Rudd's career has been his lifelong friendships with saxophonists Archie Shepp and Steve Lacy—and his numerous recordings and performances of the music of Thelonious Monk with Lacy.

Rudd has been a frequent visitor to the African nation of Mali, performing and recording with Malian musicians. His 2001 CD MALIcool, a cross-cultural collaboration with kora player Toumani Diabate and other Malian musicians, represented the first time the trombone had been featured in a recording of Malian traditional music.

In 2004 he brought his Trombone Shout Band to perform at the 4th Festival au Desert in Essakane, Tombouctou Region, Mali.

In 2005 he extended his reach even further, recording a CD with the Mongolian Buryat Band, a traditional music group of musicians from Mongolia and Buryatia, entitled Blue Mongol.

More recently he has recorded with Latino musicians from New York City.

Rudd conducts master classes and workshops both in the United States and around the world.

He co-leads an ensemble with Archie Shepp, as well as touring with MALIcool, the Mongolian Buryat Band, as well as being a featured guest with a myriad of musicians, not always "jazz" musicians.

Awards and honors

As leader

As sideman