Artist: Herb Pomeroy
Herb Pomeroy was an American jazz trumpeter, teacher, and the founder of the MIT Festival Jazz Ensemble.
Pomeroy was born in Gloucester, Massachusetts, United States. In his early teens he started performing in Boston, claiming inspiration from the music of Louis Armstrong. He studied music from 1950 to 1952 at the Schillinger House in Boston. He studied dentistry at Harvard University for a year but dropped out to pursue his jazz career.
Remaining in Boston, he played with Charlie Parker for one week in 1953, then briefly with Charlie Mariano, before going on tour with Lionel Hampton and Stan Kenton. Back in Boston, he played with Serge Chaloff and was hired to teach at Schillinger after it had been renamed the Berklee School of Music.
During the latter part of the 1950s he was the leader of a sixteen-piece band which included Mariano, Bill Berry, Jaki Byard, Joe Gordon, and Boots Mussulli. For two years after that, he led another band, which included Alan Dawson, Hal Galper, Michael Gibbs, Dusko Goykovich, and Sam Rivers.
He worked in pit orchestras for Broadway shows passing through Boston. Beginning in 1963 he led bands at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He led a band until 1993, two years before retiring from Berklee.
He helped establish the Jazz Workshop on Stuart Street under the leadership of Mariano and the faculty included Chaloff, Varty Haroutunian, Ray Santisi, and Dick Twardzik on the faculty.
In 1963 he was hired to revitalize the Techtonians big band at MIT. It was renamed the Festival Jazz Ensemble, and he continued as its director for 22 years. He led the band throughout the US and abroad, taking it to the Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland. He taught at the Lenox School of Music where he conducted a full orchestra of his students.
Further information about Herb Pomeroy is found here.
This content was excerpted from the Wikipedia article, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herb_Pomeroy, which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/).
Herb Pomeroy - Isfahan
Herb Pomeroy, jazz trumpeter plays in his hometown of Gloucester, MA
Herb Pomeroy: Videos
Herb Pomeroy