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Patrick Hall

From Working-Class to First Class: Trombonist Pat Hall and Time Remembered

Trombonist Pat Hall was born in Flint, Michigan, in 1965. His upbringing was typical of its time and place - very Michael Moore Roger & Me-era working-class. Indeed, his father worked in the local GM plant. Neither parent was particularly musical, though Pat remembers his father being partial to Kraftwerk and Pink Floyd. "Thanks to the eight-track in his car," Pat says, "that music became imprinted on my brain."

Flint public schools were fairly progressive in the 1970s, due largely to the influence of local philanthropist Charles Stewart Mott. Pat was able to start playing music quite early, in the third grade. "I remember being brought into a room with all the band instruments spread out of big tables for us to play with and choose from," Pat says. "I picked trombone because two of my friends did. I don’t remember even trying anything else on that table."

Hard times hit his family when the auto business went south, forcing them onto public assistance for a period. Hall's parents divorced when he was 10. Pat moved with his mother to Grand Rapids, a very conservative town – so strait-laced, he remembers, "They used to pre-empt Saturday Night Live." It was a tough adjustment.

Although he tried to quit the 'bone a couple of times ("I hated lugging it to and from school"), the cure never took. "It felt so strange without it," he says. He was first exposed to jazz as a freshman in high school, thanks to a pair of upperclassmen who were already gigging. One - fellow trombonist Tony Wolters - introduced Pat to the music of J.J. Johnson. "I was hooked," says Hall. "I refused to listen to another trombone player for several years, though I eventually relented and got into Curtis Fuller, too!"

At age 16, Pat attended a summer session at Berklee School of Music in Boston, where he studied with Tony Lada. Lessons basically consisted of playing Lada's collection of J.J. Johnson transcriptions. "I loved it," says Hall. Pat also played in Herb Pomeroy's and Phil Wilson's big bands. "I played so much my chops were raw. A real learning experience." After the excitement of Berklee, returning to Michigan for his senior year in high school was a come-down. Hall practiced more than he went to class, and he almost didn't graduate. He began hanging with Wolters again, who by this time was attending Western Michigan State University in Kalamazoo. Wolters hired Hall to play a weekly big band gig. "Even though I was still just a kid, they were very cool," he says. "They treated me like one of their own."

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Album Review

Patrick Hall: Time Remembered: The Music Of Bill Evans

Read "Time Remembered: The Music Of Bill Evans" reviewed by John Ephland


The unconventional inside a conventional skin. That's what we have here with trombonist Pat Hall's offering Time Remembered: The Music of Bill Evans. Playing it from the bottom up, so to speak, Hall's approach to the Evans corpus (along with two standards associated with the late pianist, Rodgers and Hart's “Spring Is Here" and Earl Zindars' “Elsa") is also unconventional due the presence of organist Greg “Organ Monk" Lewis laying down the chordal framework. Along with guitarist Martin Sewell and ...

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