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Ronnie Cuber

Ronnie Cuber is a baritone sax player strong enough to bring out the lyricism of the weighty instrument. While he plays traditional jazz in the style of Pepper Adams and Nick Brignola, Cuber also has led Latin sessions and appeared on dozens of pop recordings as an in-demand sideman. Cuber was born on Christmas, 1941, in New York. When he was 18, he appeared in Marshall Brown's Newport Youth Band at the Newport Jazz Festival. Three years later he was in Slide Hampton's groups and spent the 1960s working with Maynard Ferguson, George Benson, Lionel Hampton, Woody Herman and Lonnie Smith.During the next decade, Cuber performed on a slew of recordings and embraced distant ends of the woodwind family by playing flute and baritone sax on Eddie Palmieri's 1973 record, Sun Of Latin Music. While working with Lee Konitz in the late '70s, Cuber featured the clarinet and soprano sax alongside the baritone in his arsenal. He recorded his own Cuber Libre in 1976 and released a succession of traditional jazz records in the '80s and '90s, such as Live At The Blue Note and The Scene Is Clean (Milestone). In the 1980's he was a member of the Saturday Night Live Band for 5 years. The slew of pop musicians who have recruited easy-going Cuber for sessions include Chaka Kahn, Paul Simon. In 1998, Cuber played on and arranged The Three Baritone Saxophone tribute disc, Plays Mulligan on Dreyfus Records, and has arranged and recorded on 6 Mingus Big Band cd's for Dreyfus Records. Aaron Cohen/Downbeat


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Album Review

Steve Gadd, Eddie Gomez, Ronnie Cuber, WDR Big Band: Center Stage

Read "Center Stage" reviewed by Jack Bowers


Mixed emotions must underline this review. Center Stage, featuring bassist Eddie Gomez, drummer Steve Gadd and baritone saxophonist Ronnie Cuber with Germany's superb WDR Big Band conducted by Michael Abene, was recorded in Cologne in January and February 2022. Sadly, Ronnie Cuber passed away in October, shortly after the album was released. If this was Cuber's last hurrah, it thunders loudly above the rooftops, as his solos (on each of the album's nine numbers) and melodic passages ...

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Radio & Podcasts

Ronnie Cuber, Oscar Peterson, Stan Bock & Morgan Faw

Read "Ronnie Cuber, Oscar Peterson, Stan Bock & Morgan Faw" reviewed by Joe Dimino


We begin the 775th Episode of Neon Jazz with Kansas City's native son and saxophonist Morgan Faw joined by his band The Flame with the song “Watson Family BBQ" off 2022 album It Takes a Village. From there, we pay tribute to baritone saxophonist Ronnie Cuber. As the episode unfolds, we discover interesting songs and stories from Beverley Church Hogan, Ezra Weiss and Tim Fitzgerald. In between, we hear legends Oscar Peterson and Wes Montgomery. It all comes to a ...

2
Album Review

Ronnie Cuber: Live At Montmartre

Read "Live At Montmartre" reviewed by Chris Mosey


Of all the musical instruments invented by Adolphe Sax in the mid-19th century, the baritone saxophone remains the least played. Harry Carney persuaded Duke Ellington to use the heavy, cumbersome instrument and it became a distinctive part of the band's sound. Others who have played the baritone saxophone include Cecil Payne, Pepper Adams, Serge Chaloff and--for reasons that remain obscure--Lisa Simpson (perhaps she welcomed the challenge). Gerry Mulligan and the Swede Lars Gullin gave the instrument a distinctive, laid-back, specifically ...

86
Album Review

Ronnie Cuber: Infra-Rae: Ronnie Cuber Meets The Beets Brothers

Read "Infra-Rae: Ronnie Cuber Meets The Beets Brothers" reviewed by Raul d'Gama Rose


It is easy to forget an elder statesman such as the magisterial Ronnie Cuber, who continues to give commanding performances on his baritone saxophone. The absence of a sense of history clouds successive generations, who will honor young masters like Brian Landrus but forget the ancestors. The great tones from the bass end of the saxophone family would be nothing without men such as Harry Carney, Gerry Mulligan, Cecil Payne, Pepper Adams, and of course, Cuber. The saxophonist, who was ...

181
Album Review

Tom Scott with Special Guest Phil Woods: Bebop United

Read "Bebop United" reviewed by Michael P. Gladstone


The unblemished record of Pittsburgh's Mancheaster Craftsmen's Guild as a venue for recording jazz albums continues with the this new recording from Tom Scott with special guest Phil Woods. Scott has amassed a lengthy discography which has reflected high energy fusion, pop-soul and smooth jazz over the past two decades. His earlier years, however, found him playing strongly as a member of the Don Ellis and Oliver Nelson Big Bands.

In 1992, Scott returned to the mainstream with Born Again, ...

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Album Review

Tom Scott: Bebop United

Read "Bebop United" reviewed by Jim Santella


For Bebop United Tom Scott convened a a group of veterans for a straight-ahead live auditorium performance in Pittsburgh. His cohesive ensemble interprets each selection with a comfortable groove and a lot of soul. Featuring Phil Woods on three numbers, the concert brings slow ballads and up-tempo romps to its audience convincingly. Trumpeter Randy Brecker and tenor saxophonist Scott provide much of the dialogue, each bringing a warm presence to the concert.

For “His Eyes, Her Eyes, soloists ...

187
Album Review

Tom Scott: Bebop United

Read "Bebop United" reviewed by John Kelman


He's had a multifaceted career in almost every imaginable area of jazz--not to mention working as a gun for hire on albums by singer/songwriters like Joni Mitchell and Carole King. It's easy to forget that saxophonist Tom Scott actually started out as a jazz traditionalist. While his own albums have leaned more towards fusion and contemporary jazz, the early days of his career found Scott cutting his teeth on albums by Oliver Nelson, Don Ellis and Thelonious Monk.

So when ...

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Obituary

Ronnie Cuber (1941-2022)

Ronnie Cuber (1941-2022)

Source: JazzWax by Marc Myers

Ronnie Cuber, a saxophonist and flutist who primarily played the baritone and whose stampeding solo approach landed him in top big bands in the 1960s and '70s and leading jazz, rock, pop, Latin, funk and soul orchestras and combos in the 1980s and beyond, including the Saturday Night Live band, died October 7. He was 80. Ronnie died in his studio on New York's Upper West Side after suffering from internal injuries related to a fall near his home in ...

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Interview

Ronnie Cuber on Maynard (PT. 2)

Ronnie Cuber on Maynard (PT. 2)

Source: JazzWax by Marc Myers

Ronnie Cuber comes out of the Harry Carney and Pepper Adams school of blowing. He corkscrews into a song on the baritone saxophone and then works it over with an aggressive attack, feeding into the instrument's deep, barrel feel. Ronnie began in the Newport Youth Band and moved on to Slide Hampton's band and then Maynard Ferguson's while he was still in his early '20s. After leaving Maynard Ferguson's band in 1965, Ronnie recorded steadily, bringing enormous life and energy ...

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Interview

Ronnie Cuber on Maynard (PT. 1)

Ronnie Cuber on Maynard (PT. 1)

Source: JazzWax by Marc Myers

Ronnie Cuber is a baritone saxophonist with a beefy sound who came up through the big bands of the 1960s. During this problematic big band era, rock and soul put the squeeze on orchestras' abilities to earn a profit. Yet top-name leaders still managed to tour and record, in many cases by arranging rock and soul hits and, by decade's end, incorporating jazz-rock fusion into their books. Ronnie had the good fortune to play in Maynard Ferguson's band from 1963 ...

Melanie Howell-Brooks
saxophone, baritone
Martin Perna
saxophone, baritone
Tristan Voitcu
saxophone, baritone

Photos

Music

Recordings: As Leader | As Sideperson

Center Stage

Leopard
2022

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Live At Montmartre

Storyville Records
2018

buy

Infra-Rae: Ronnie...

Challenge Records
2012

buy

Bebop United

MCG Jazz
2006

buy

Cubism

Blue Moon
2002

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Videos

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