Voted Trumpeter Of The Year and recipient of the Record Of The Year Award by the Jazz Journalists Association in 2017, Lynch’s talents have been also recognized by top placing in the Downbeat Critics and Readers Polls (#3 Trumpet Critics Poll); as well as feature stories and highly rated reviews for his work in the New York Times, Jazz Times, and Downbeat. He has received multiple Grammy Award nominations – the latest in 2016 for his Madera Latino project- and garnered a Grammy win in 2006 for Best Latin Jazz Album; He is also the recipient of grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, Chamber Music America, and Meet The Composer.
Professor of Jazz and Studio Music at the Frost School Of Music, University of Miami, Lynch has has conducted clinics, workshops, and residencies the world over, including at the Stanford Jazz Workshop, Harvard University, Dartmouth University, Michigan State University, Senzoku University (Japan), Yamaha Artist Services Taipei and Moscow, and the Rotterdam Codarts University. He is Artist In Residence for the Wisconsin Conservatory of Music’s Jazz Institute (2010-present) and Artistic Director of Ensamble Tonica, Guadalajara, Mexico. Before joining the faculty at the Frost School, Professor Lynch was on the faculty of New York University from 2003 to 2011. He has also taught at the Prinz Claus Conservatorium (Netherlands) as Visiting Professor (2002-07), Long Island University, and The New School.
Born September 12, 1956 in Urbana, Illinois, Lynch grew up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin where he apprenticed on a high level with such local residents as pianist Buddy Montgomery; while located in San Diego in 1980-81, he gained further valuable experience in the group of alto master Charles McPherson. Towards the end of 1981, Lynch moved to New York, and soon linked up with the Horace Silver Quintet (1982-1985) and the Toshiko Akiyoshi Jazz Orchestra (1982-1988). Simultaneously, he played and recorded on the Latin scene with salsa bandleader Angel Canales (1982-83) and the legendary cantante Hector LaVoe (1983-87). He began his association with Eddie Palmieri in 1987, and at the end of 1988 joined what turned out to be the final edition of Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers. He began his tenure with The Phil Woods Quintet in 1992, which continued until Woods’ death in September 2015.
Lynch’s discography as a featured artist and sideman runs to over 200 recordings, including 9 albums with Eddie Palmieri, 13 albums as part of the Phil Woods Quintet, and 3 albums with Art Blakey and The Jazz Messengers, all featuring his contributions as arranger, composer, and featured soloist. Other notable recordings include albums with Prince, Toshiko Akiyoshi, Issac Delgado, Donald Harrison, George Russell, Tito Puente, and many other artists representing diverse genres of Jazz, Latin, and popular music. Lynch has also arranged and produced for numerous artists, including Lila Downs, Conrad Herwig (the Latin Side series of albums), Mondo Grosso, and Yerba Buena.
Lynch now devotes the majority of his performing and creative time to his own musical endeavors, centering around his own groups and recording label Hollistic MusicWorks.
Brian Lynch is a Yamaha Performing Artist, and endorses Austin Custom Brass mouthpieces and the Lefreque Sound Bridge.
Contact Information
Management/Booking:
BOOKING:
The Berkeley Agency
Jim Cassell
Tel: (+1) 510.843.4902 [email protected]
PUBLICITY:
Kim Smith PR
Tel: (+1) 718-858-2557
Mobile: (+1) 917- 349-8090 [email protected]
Quotes, Notes & Etc.
“You can lose yourself in the pure energy of his playing, but at any moment you can switch your attention to the logic and craftsmanship of his music and find multiple rewards.” NEIL TESSER, Jazziz
“Lynch demonstrates that a dedicated, knowledgeable jazzman can play a diversity of styles with telling authenticity, and make the renditions extremely appealing to both musician and neophyte…Lynch is simply first-rate.” ZAN STEWART, Downbeat
“When you’re as dynamic and flexible a trumpeter as Lynch, everyone wants you.” THE NEW YORKER
“ … a knife-blade articulation on his horn… his command of rhythm, sharpened by a long apprenticeship with Mr. Palmieri, lent impressive authority to his playing…” NATE CHINEN, The New York Times
The Recôncavo is an almost invisible center-of-gravity. Circumscribing the Bay of All Saints, this region was landing for more enslaved human beings than any other such throughout all of human history. Not unrelated, it is also birthplace of some of the most physically & spiritually uplifting music ever made. —Sparrow
"Dear Sparrow: I am thrilled to receive your email! Thank you for including me in this wonderful matrix."
—Susan Rogers: Personal recording engineer for Prince, inc. "Purple Rain", "Sign o' the Times", "Around the World in a Day"... Director of the Berklee Music Perception and Cognition Laboratory
I'm Pardal here in Brazil (that's "Sparrow" in English). The deep roots of this project are in Manhattan, where Allen Klein (managed the Beatles and The Rolling Stones) called me about royalties for the estate of Sam Cooke... where Jerry Ragovoy (co-wrote Time is On My Side, sung by the Stones; Piece of My Heart, Janis Joplin of course; and Pata Pata, sung by the great Miriam Makeba) called me looking for unpaid royalties... where I did contract and licensing for Carlinhos Brown's participation on Bahia Black with Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock...
...where I rescued unpaid royalties for Aretha Franklin (from Atlantic Records), Barbra Streisand (from CBS Records), Led Zeppelin, Mongo Santamaria, Gilberto Gil, Astrud Gilberto, Airto Moreira, Jim Hall, Wah Wah Watson (Melvin Ragin), Ray Barretto, Philip Glass, Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd for his interest in Bob Marley compositions, Cat Stevens/Yusuf Islam and others...
...where I worked with Earl "Speedo" Carroll of the Cadillacs (who went from doo-wopping as a kid on Harlem streetcorners to top of the charts to working as a janitor at P.S. 87 in Manhattan without ever losing what it was that made him special in the first place), and with Jake and Zeke Carey of The Flamingos (I Only Have Eyes for You)... stuff like that.
Yeah this is Bob's first record contract, made with Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd of Studio One and co-signed by his aunt because he was under 21. I took it to Black Rock to argue with CBS' lawyers about the royalties they didn't want to pay. They paid.
MATRIX MUSICAL
The Matrix was built below among some of the world's most powerfully moving music, some of it made by people barely known beyond village borders. Or in the case of Sodré, his anthem A MASSA — a paean to Brazil's poor ("our pain is the pain of a timid boy, a calf stepped on...") — having blasted from every radio between the Amazon and Brazil's industrial south, before he was silenced. (that's me left, with David Dye & Kim Junod for U.S. National Public Radio) ... The Matrix started with Sodré, with João do Boi, with Roberto Mendes, with Bule Bule, with Roque Ferreira... music rooted in the sugarcane plantations of Bahia. Hence our logo (a cane cutter).