Bio:
Robin Eubanks is the premier jazz trombonist of his generation. Whether performing with his groups, Mental Images or EB3 or with The SF Jazz Collective, Dave Holland Quintet / Big Band, Robin is an artist whose impact on audiences has proven powerful and lasting.
Robin was born to a very musical family: His brother, Kevin Eubanks, was the musical director for The Tonight Show; their mother is a music educator; another brother, Duane, is a renown trumpet player; and their Uncle Ray Bryant was a prominent jazz pianist in his own right.
Robin’s musical education began at the age of eight and continued through college, when he graduated cum laude from the University of the Arts in Philadelphia. As a student, he studied not only trombone, but also Music Theory, Harmony, Composition and Arranging. Following his graduation, the young trombonist moved to New York City where he began a career that has since yielded an amazing array of collaborations with such notable artists as Art Blakey, Elvin Jones, Eddie Palmieri, Sun Ra, Barbra Streisand, The Rolling Stones and Talking Heads – just to name a few. He’s won Grammys for his performances on Michael Brecker’s Wide Angles and Dave Holland’s What Goes Around and Overtime.
Robin taught at The Oberlin College Conservatory for 20 years. He was a tenured Professor of Jazz Trombone and Jazz Composition. He also taught at Berklee College of Music and at New England Conservatory. In addition, he taught at Prince Claus Conservatoire in The Netherlands for 5 years. And, if that were not enough, in the intervening years, Robin has become a popular lecturer, Yamaha clinician and conducts Master Classes at leading institutions throughout the U.S. and abroad.
In 2014, Robin won the Jazz Times Critics Poll for Best Trombonist and is a multiple winner of Downbeat’s Readers and Critics Polls for Trombonist of the Year. He’s also won compositional grants from Chamber Music America and an ASCAP Composer’s grant. As with his performing career, his compositional interests are staggeringly diverse. Musically fluent, but also stylistically multilingual, the eclectic composer speaks a variety of musical “languages”. How does he do it? The key appears to be a combination of having a complete command of his craft, but also an innate gift that can sound like a combination of math and magic.
To hear him explain it:
“My compositions can morph fluidly from Swing to Funk to Latin to 11/8 or 7/4, without sounding forced or awkward. This allows me to draw upon all of my experiences. I have the freedom to create forms that unite diverse influences into new structures that are organic.”
Robin’s compositions and arrangements have been recorded by The Mingus Big Band, SF Jazz Collective, Dave Holland Quintet and Big Band, et. al. In addition, colleges and universities throughout the United States are performing Robin’s original works and have arranged and recorded his music for their ensembles. He has recorded nine albums as a leader and contributed his talents to hundreds as a sideman.
Robin was awarded Research Status from Oberlin for the 2013-2014 Academic Year.
Contact Information
Management/Booking:
Management:
AB Artists Management [email protected]
Anna M. Sala
NYC Office: (212) 581-0612
NJ Office: (201) 928-0513
Website: www.abartists.nyc
Booking:
AB Artists
Eric Hanson
Phila Office: (215) 483-6230
NYC Office: (212) 581-0612 [email protected]
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).