Posted: Tue May 01, 2018 3:31 am Post subject: Lew Soloff Memory
Chatting with an old friend the other day and we reminisced about hearing Lew Soloff play with a big band at a music conference in Ohio in '74 or '75. We can't remember where, maybe Columbus? We can't remember what he played, something Vizzutti wrote for him? Hey it was the '70's!
But what we do remember was that he absolutely smoked it, but, he chipped an "A" midway through. When he finished and after the applause, he apologized and asked the band to go back and restart before the A. He absolutely nailed it AND played out the rest of the chart AGAIN and was dead perfect!
What a great player and a wonderful person he was. RIP Lew!
Joined: 31 Mar 2007 Posts: 2481 Location: The Big Valley
Posted: Tue May 01, 2018 6:01 am Post subject:
I first heard Lew, as most of us did, on BS&T and the iconic solo on Spinning Wheel. In the 90's I caught a set he did at a small club on the Upper West Side and thought that is was one of most artistic approaches to jazz I had heard to date.
Mid 2000s, I contacted him after deciding to play again, and knowing I was heading to NYC for biz, I straight up asked for a lesson. He called right back and happily agreed... to two! And now, after he's gone, those lessons keep me on track in more ways than he would have thought. Here's to the artist known as Lew!
Joined: 24 Nov 2001 Posts: 615 Location: Hilton Head, SC
Posted: Tue May 01, 2018 5:09 pm Post subject:
Could it have been "The Feel of a Vision"? That was on the Chuck Mangione album "Friends & Love" with Marvin Stamm playing it. But I think that I read somewhere that Mangione originally wrote it for Soloff.
Could it have been "The Feel of a Vision"? That was on the Chuck Mangione album "Friends & Love" with Marvin Stamm playing it. But I think that I read somewhere that Mangione originally wrote it for Soloff.
The only thing I can remember about the piece Solo For Soloff is he played piccolo trumpet on one section. It may have been the opening. Lew played the crap out of it.
I met Lew a few times in the 70's. A real quirky guy. He was a really nice guy but he was a character.
I remember hearing Lew Soloff with the Gil Evans orchestra at the Montreal International Jazz Festival in the 90's. What I remember most was his leading the band from the trumpet section.
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Miss the note, start over to hit it