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Loren Schoenberg
"Some people say to me, 'You should have been born fifty years earlier'," conductor/saxophonist/scholar Loren Schoenberg told John Robert Brown in an interview found on The Jazz Museum in Harlem's website. "Of course I would have grown up to the great music of Benny Goodman and Artie Shaw. And I'd have probably spent my life interviewing the widow of Scott Joplin!" A historian by nature, Loren Schoenberg became a fixture in the jazz world with his encyclopedic knowledge about the genre and passion for preserving its past while making it eminently contemporary. Today, in addition to his work performing, conducting, writing, and teaching, Schoenberg has been named Executive Director of The Jazz Museum in Harlem.
Loren Schoenberg was born July 23, 1958 in Fairlawn, New Jersey. His father worked for the New York Telephone Company. His mother, a children's librarian, began teaching Loren the piano when he was three. A year later, she found a neighborhood piano teacher to take her son beyond simple scales. Schoenberg's love of old films led him to Benny Goodman, and his love of Goodman's music made Schoenberg a jazz fan in the early 1970s. Jazz's heyday as a popular music form was over by that point, and while Schoenberg was collecting classic 78 rpm records by jazz originators like Louis Armstrong, Jelly Roll Morton, and "Fats" Waller, most of his peers were busy listening to rock and roll and folk music.
Scholars disagree over how to best define jazz. In his book, The NPR Curious Listener's Guide to Jazz (2002), Schoenberg wrote: "What makes Jazz music different from country, classical, rock, and other well-known genres is its basic malleability. . . . The great majority of it is not, as many believe, spun out of the air, but is rather a highly organized and (hopefully) spontaneous set of theme and variations." Rock and roll supplanted jazz as popular music in the 1950s, and by the time Schoenberg discovered it, many of jazz's greatest practitioners had fallen out of the spotlight and were often struggling to find gigs. Subsequently, the young aficionado was able to watch the greats perform up close and personal in humble venues as nearby as Hackensack, New Jersey, talking to them afterwards and occasionally invited to demonstrate his own skills for his idols, who were impressed that someone as young as Schoenberg was still interested in the genre. It was in this way that Schoenberg received informal piano lessons from master jazz pianists Teddy Wilson and Hank Jones. In 1972, Teddy Wilson brought his young protégé to a jazz performance at the Waldorf Astoria where Schoenberg first met Benny Goodman.
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Christian McBride: The Movement Revisited
by Chris May
The spring 2020 release of The Movement Revisited: A Musical Portrait Of Four Icons is the latest chapter in Christian McBride's inspirational salute to the African American civil rights movement and to four of its heroes: Dr. Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks, Malcolm X and Muhammad Ali. Embracing big band jazz, small group jazz, gospel, funk and chorale musics, together with spoken word passages, the suite employs an eighteen-piece band, the ten-piece Voices Of The Flame gospel choir, two lead ...
read moreLoren Schoenberg: From Benny Goodman to The Savory Collection
by AAJ Staff
Saxophonist, band-leader and writer Loren Schoenberg, now Executive Director of the National Jazz Museum in Harlem, spent an interesting childhood and teenager-hood growing up in New Jersey in the 1970s, meeting and befriending both Teddy Wilson and Hank Jones, and ultimately becoming employed by Wilson's famous '30s boss, Benny Goodman. Schoenberg was first an assistant to Goodman and then Goodman's manager, and, as a tenor saxophonist, formed the big band that Goodman was eventually to lead himself for a year ...
read moreLoren Schoenberg Jazz Orchestra: Out of This World
by Jack Bowers
One of the things that makes Loren Schoenberg’s orchestra such a pleasure to hear is the leader’s almost encyclopedic knowledge of music — not only Jazz, but music in general — and his willingness to embrace so many styles and genres to frame a musical image that not only charms but surprises as well. On Out of This World, Schoenberg shifts gears more often than a truck driver in West Virginia, but every move he makes meshes perfectly with the ...
read moreNational Jazz Museum in Harlem Conversations on Civic Jazz with Gregory Clark, Loren Schoenberg, and Guests on June 16 - June 27
Source:
Scott Thompson Public Relations
All events are free to the public Civic Jazz author Gregory Clark and National Jazz Museum in Harlem Artistic Director Loren Schoenberg engage in lively conversation for five exciting sessions in June at 7:00pm. The discussions will set the context for an afternoon of 'live' music that demonstrates the swinging sort of democracy that makes jazz happen. Join us at the museum located at 104 E. 126th Street, Harlem. Tuesday, June 16: Civic Jazz and cultural work of the music ...
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Saxophonist/Writer/Historian Loren Schoenberg Interviewed at All About Jazz
Source:
John Kelman
Saxophonist, band-leader and writer Loren Schoenberg, now Executive Director of the National Jazz Museum in Harlem, spent an interesting childhood and teenager-hood growing up in New Jersey in the 1970s, meeting and befriending both Teddy Wilson and Hank Jones, and ultimately becoming employed by Wilson's famous '30s boss, Benny Goodman. Schoenberg was first an assistant to Goodman and then Goodman's manager, and, as a tenor saxophonist, formed the big band that Goodman was eventually to lead himself for a year ...
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Interview: Loren Schoenberg on BG
Source:
JazzWax by Marc Myers
Loren Schoenberg knows his Benny Goodman. As a tenor saxophonist, jazz writer and executive director of the National Jazz Museum in Harlem, Loren, 50, wrote the extensive liner notes that accompany Mosaic's Classic Columbia and Okeh Benny Goodman Orchestra Sessions (1939-1958), a fabulous new seven-CD box set I reviewed yesterday. Loren also is an insider. Back in the late 1970s and early 1980s, when most 20-somethings were in mosh pits or roller discos, Loren was working for Goodman, helping the ...
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9th Annual Black & White Dance in Harlem
Source:
Daniel Kassell - Authentic Marketing
Luther Gales presents 9th Annual Black & White Dance Friday, April 4, 2008 9:00pm - 2:00am $50.00 at the Door
Featuring
The Harlem Jazz Museum All-Star Big Band Loren Schoenberg, Director
Al Saints Church Spann Hall 47 East 129th Street at Madison Avenue
B.Y. O. B. B. & Set Ups Will be Available (Bring Your Own Brown Bag)
The Black & White Dance is ...
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Jazz Museum in Harlem Presents Joe Wilder Quartet and the Christian McBride/Loren Schoenberg Duo Saturday, January 14, 2006, 10am-2pm
Source:
All About Jazz
January 4, 2006
To: Listings/Critics/Features From: JAZZ PROMO SERVICES Press Contact: JIM EIGO, [email protected]
The Jazz Museum in Harlem 104 East 126th Street New York, NY 10035 212 348-8300 www.jazzmuseuminharlem.org
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: 1/4/05
Jazz Museum in Harlem Education Initiative Presents Celebration ! Featuring The Joe Wilder Quartet and the Christian McBride/Loren Schoenberg Duo a free event that you should not miss. ...
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