For those unaware, Rich Willey plays trumpet, bass trumpet, valve trombone, tuba and Electronic Valve Instrument (EVI) and he is also a composer, arranger, and bandleader, performing regularly in the southeast.

Rich taught at University of North Carolina Asheville for 12 years and Clemson University for 7 years and continues to teach privately.

Rich’s new album, Puttin’ On The Ritz is mostly comprised of beautiful and fun jazz standards that Rich arranged for four horns. He played and recorded all the horn parts with a talented group of all-star Chicago rhythm players.

The album is produced by the phenomenal trumpeter and gifted arranger Carey Deadman who also masterfully arranged string parts on eight tunes.

Of the eleven selections (three of which are originals), two are vocal numbers: one featuring Zeke Listenbee and the other, Rich. Two of the original compositions reflect Rich’s deep spiritual beliefs.

Rich writes: These small group arrangements represent how I hear jazz. I prefer taste over virtuosity. I like hearing melodies, I like hearing interesting ensembles, and I like hearing a certain amount of structure between improvised passages.

My concept of jazz and jazz improvisation has to do with communicating with the audience. I hope to always be ’telling a story’ via my writing and my playing.

1. Poor Butterfly
2. If I Should Lose You
3. I’ll Be Seeing You
4. Puttin’ On The Ritz
5. My Melancholy Baby
6. Holy Trinity (Radio Edit)
7. Song For Janet
8. Uncle Remus
9. Sweet Lorraine
10. Hard Hearted Hannah
11. But For The Grace Of God
12. Holy Trinity (Full Version)

This vibrant, some might say sparkling new album opens on the free flowing Poor Butterfly (a track inspired by Giacomo Puccini’s opera Madame Butterfly) and the finger-snapping melodies within If I Should Lose You (which itself was first introduced in the 1936 film Rose of the Rancho) and then they bring us the stern fair of I’ll Be Seeing You (which was interestingly inserted into the Broadway musical Right This Way, which closed after fifteen performances), the absolutely stellar, spirited and yet cultured, titular Puttin’ On The Ritz (made famous by the 1930s film of the same name) and then comes the laid low My Melancholy Baby (first published in 1912) and the Rich Willey-written Holy Trinity (Radio Edit).

Up next is another Rich Willey-written track, the gentle dance floor swirl of Song For Janet and the always wonderful to hear Uncle Remus (written by the brilliant Frank Zappa and George Duke, and first released on Zappa’s 1974 album Apostrophe), and they are in turn backed by the popular jazz standard Sweet Lorraine, a track that tells, in humorous fashion, the story of a sadistic vamp, the uproarious Hard Hearted Hannah, the album rounding out on the Rich Willey-written, ornately beautiful, humble and thankful But For The Grace Of God, coming to a righteous close on the full ten minute version of the aforementioned Holy Trinity.

A U.S. Army bandsman, he studied at the U.S. Navy School of Music and later attended North Texas State University where he studied jazz improvisation with Rich Matteson, Jack Petersen and Dan Haerle.

Rich spent his formative years as a jazz player in Philadelphia and New York City jazz clubs and participated in the BMI Jazz Composers Workshop studying with Bob Brookmeyer and Manny Albam. He studied trumpet and bass trumpet with the legendary Dr. Donald S. Reinhardt in Philadelphia from 1978-1986.

Rich is a graduate of the Manhattan School of Music, where he earned a master’s in jazz performance/trumpet. While there he studied arranging with Mike Abene, trumpet with Byron Stripling, improvisation with Garry Dial and film scoring with Ed Green.

Rich has toured with Maynard Fergusion’s Big Bop Nouveau and the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra, and has played numerous times for the Jimmy Dorsey Orchestra, the Cab Calloway Orchestra, the Sammy Kaye Orchestra and the Nelson Riddle Orchestra.

Rich has played with or for many great musicians, including Lionel Hampton, Hank Mobley, Don Patterson, Buddy Morrow, Bob Haggart, Dick Hyman, Claude Roditi, Chris Potter, Conrad Herwig, John Swana, Bob Mintzer, Kenny Drew Jr., Brad Mehidau, Mel Torme, Bobby Sanabria, Skitch Henderson, Tommy Flanagan, and countless others.

Rich owns and operates Boptism Music, a publishing company he formed in 2001 for the purpose of offering and distributing his jazz and brass method books, over 40 to date.

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