“It’s very unusual to get to play with someone who inspired you to play in the first place,” says Swell, who has also performed with Lionel Hampton, Buddy Rich, and William Parker and leads the band Slammin’ the Infinite. “I first heard Roswell when I was 15, on [Archie Shepp’s 1966 Impulse! Records album] Live in San Francisco, and I thought, ‘That’s the way to play the trombone!’ I finally got to meet him when I was 19, and then I became his student. He’s been my mentor ever since, which has just been amazing for me.”
“A lot of people have called jazz ‘America’s classical music,’ and I believe it really is,” says Rudd. “But there’s something else to it, another level, something that I’d feel when I went to hear Miles or Monk. I call it ‘high American musical theater.’”
If such a theater exists, Roswell Rudd has surely been cast in one of its leading roles.
Roswell Rudd will play two shows at Maverick Concerts in Woodstock on July 18: a children’s program at 11am, and “An Evening of Jazz Explorations” with the Trombone Tribe at 8pm. www.maverickconcerts.org. Trombone Tribe is out now on Soundscape/Sunnyside Records. www.roswellrudd.com.
