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About Bryant
Bryant Allard (Born August 27, 1958) is an American jazz and Latin trumpeter, bandleader, composer/arranger, and educator. Born in San Diego, California, he started playing professionally at the age of 16. Bryant moved to the East Coast in 1978 and attended the Berklee College of Music in Boston between 1978 and 1981. During his studies at Berklee, Bryant spent a lot of time in New York listening to many of the greats of jazz (Dexter Gordon, Freddie Hubbard, Woody Shaw, The Brecker Brothers, Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers, Art Farmer, Billy Higgins, Cedar Walton, and many more). “I was a kid in a candy store”, Bryant says. “This was the best jazz education one could get, sitting in the front row of the Village Vanguard listening to Dexter Gordon”. While in Boston and New York he studied trumpet with Mike Methany and Claudio Roditi, and later studied in San Diego with the great jazz trombonist/educator Hal Crook of the Tonight Show Band.
After graduating in 1984, he moved to the San Francisco Bay Area where he played with such notable musicians as Pianist Mark Levine, and Cuban pianist Carlos Federico. In 1986, Bryant started his own after-school music education Program, M.U.S.E. (Musical Understanding thru Sound Education), reaching out to over 25 schools in both the Bay Area and Portland. The program continues today, stronger than ever 38 years after its founding.
Bryant moved to Portland in 1994 where he currently resides and continues to play with some of Portland’s world-class musicians. His jazz and Latin compositions are recorded on several CDs that have received great reviews. You can catch Bryant around town performing with his own groups and with Nick Gefroh’s salsa band Pa’Lante in many of the local clubs, restaurants, and summer festivals. His most recent CD project, recorded in August 2023 with his group The Powerhouse Jazz Quintet, is now streaming online and on his YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@PowerhouseJazzQuintet-xb6wt.
Bryants music is also now streaming under the Powerhouse Quintet on Spotify, itunes, Apple Music, Pandora, and many other steaming networks:
Brian Lynch trumpeter extraordinaire whose played with so many incredible bands including; Eddie Palmieri, Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers, and Horace Silver
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When I got my first trumpet at the age of ten I was hooked. I thought it was the coolest thing ever, even more than my passion for sports. It was unique and different and I loved sitting in that crowded band room at school surrounded by all these other players. I remember riding my bike to school, having bungie strapped my horn to the handlebars, cautiously sliding through the back streets of Del Mar to school. It was my favorite day of the week.
In high school, some of my friends and I formed a band called Embo’s Jazz Band. We practiced at a friend’s house in the garage and sounded terrible, but we thought we were good (I have the tapes to prove it). Still, we were hooked: we loved playing jazz.
I continued to play my horn through high school and into my college years at the prestigious Berklee College of Music in Boston. Once I graduated, I moved to the San Francisco Bay Area where I accelerated my musical journey playing jazz and salsa gigs.
It is at this point in my life that I began composing and realized I really enjoyed writing in both the jazz and Latin genres. How could I not be influenced by all those great world-class musicians in New York and San Francisco that I mentioned before?
My approach to writing tunes begins with keeping in mind the players who will be playing my tunes. I found it important to create space within the tunes that allows each band member to contribute their personal touch, keeping the tune fresh every time we play it.
If you come out to my gigs, you will hear a variety of styles steeped in the jazz and Latin traditions. I hope to meet many of you at a performance down the road. Keeping live music alive is such an important antidote to all of the mental and physical health difficulties that we may be experiencing in these trying times.
Sincerely,
Bryant Allard