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Freddie Jacobs
AVAILABLE MERCHANDISE:
ARTIST BIOGRAPHY:
While a student at MIT, Jacobs got involved in music as much as math and sciences. As Herb Pomeroy, director of the MIT Jazz Big Band, remembers, "Fred's energy and drive was responsible for getting our band to [the] Montreux [Jazz Festival] that year he was band manager. And he played excellent trumpet all four years. His heart was into both aspects of the music."
"I always wanted to have a more creative lifestyle than an engineer sitting at a desk," says the trumpeter, who had no problem with the switch. "The mindset at work behind organizing music, mathematically and architecturally, is no mere left-brain, right-brain dichotomy."
Jacobs worked on his trumpet, studying classical form and technique with Ray Crisara, Bill Summers and Carmine Caruso, improvisation with Freddie Hubbard and Eddie Daniels. In the 1970s, he played in the big bands of Lionel Hampton, Buddy Rich and with Sam Jones/Tom Harrell, Eddie Palmieri and Jimmy McGriff.
He also honed his arranging skills, and contributed charts to the books of Hampton and the Jones/Harrell band.
Jacobs' artistic priorities are certainly direct enough. "I always want to swing, sound good, be different and creative, and show a spirit that stirs something in people."
Take Jacobs' first lead date, Time Change. This was a classy debut. It featured superb rhythm sections, both acoustic (Romero Lubambo and Rufus Reid) and electric (Chuck Loeb and Troy Millard), Dave Kikoski played keyboards and Bill Stewart drums throughout. Scott Kreitzer's reeds shared the front line with Jacobs, whose moving, exciting, and widely varied compositions took center stage.
Time Change charted #22 with The Gavin Report and was an R&R 60% jazz breaker. Billboard cited its "solidly swinging title track"; Jazziz reported that Jacobs evoked "the trumpet's magic power."
"Time Change," explains Jacobs, "depicted musicians as world travelers, going through changes not just of chords and time zones but of jet lag and new cultures. Yet they somehow manage to make adjustments to whatever comes up: a distant or responsive audience, a terrible PA, a great soundman, musicians with different conceptions and attitudes." He's always on to that next level, and invested deep thought behind the attractive musical package.
Jacobs, presently at work on a new project, intriguingly titled Journey Through Night, again encompasses multi-level ideas, this time involving dream travel. "Listeners go through journeys, and so do players," says Jacobs. "We close our eyes as we play and enter our thoughts, a waking dream world. In the abstract plane, there's the dream fantasy of music, where we drift in our imaginations. But on the practical plane are the actual journeys musicians make, like long drives to gigs and personnel shifts on the stand. Listeners are especially attracted to jazz, because improvisation makes each trip new and different."
Fred's band has appeared at jazz venues including Birdland, Sweet Basil, Visiones, Trumpets, et al.
Highlight performances earlier this year included the MIT alumni concert, celebrating director Herb Pomeroy's 70th birthday, and the Annual Brass Conference concert tribute to Claudio Roditi, held at Purchase College.
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