Pepper Adams

Born: October 8, 1930

Pepper Adams was one of hard bop's most significant baritone saxophonists. His dark, hearty tone on the horn and driving rhythmic sense provided the antithesis to the lighter, floating (and consequently more popular) styles of Gerry Mulligan.

His family moved to Rochester, New York when he was young and in that city he began his musical efforts. That said his family's later move to Detroit, Michigan, a suburb of which was his birthplace, would be more important to his career. This occurred when he was sixteen and in Detroit he met several musicians who would later be important to his career, one example being Donald Byrd. He also became interested in Wardell Gray's approach to the baritone saxophone and indicates he and Harry Carney were his baritone influences. He also spent time in a United States Army band and briefly had a tour of duty in Korea.

Jimmy Farace: Hours Fly, Flowers Die

by Jerome Wilson
August 2, 2025

There have been many recordings of saxophones backed by string sections since Charlie Parker experimented with the idea many years ago. The majority of those have featured tenor or alto sax players. However, on his debut album, Jimmy Farace demonstrates how the baritone sax can excel beautifully in this format. The full instrumental lineup ...

Saul Dautch: Music for the People

by Jack Bowers
July 3, 2025

It is always a pleasure to hear a straight-ahead contemporary jazz quintet whose front line consists of baritone sax and trumpet, especially when it is as well-drawn as Florida-bred baritone Saul Dautch's debut recording, Music for the People, on which he shares melodic assignments with trumpeter Noah Halpern and, to a lesser extent, pianist Miki Yamanaka. ...

Nick Brignola: Between A Rock And The Jazz Place, Part 2

by Rob Rosenblum
May 15, 2025

Part 1 | Part 2 This interview was originally published in 1969 in an Albany, New York area arts publication called Transition. It documents a time when saxophonist Nick Brignola was in the process of trying to break out of the confines of bebop and incorporate some of the elements of fusion that was ...

Noah Pettibon

Born: May 16, 1998

Baritone saxophonist, woodwind multi-instrumentalist, bandleader, and composer from Tacoma, Washington.

Born in 1998, Noah is a proud student of the baritone saxophone and the jazz tradition. Through these disciplines, he finds a niche among his peers in the Pacific Northwest scene. Being an equally dedicated bandleader, composer, multi-instrumentalist, and teacher of saxophone, clarinet, and flute, music is a second language for Noah.

His basic music education began with piano lessons at age 6 which he continued until age 10 when he began playing saxophone in school band. In high school, Noah’s love of improvisation was initiated, at which point he began studying privately on saxophone, clarinet, and flute. He is a graduate of Central Washington University (‘21) where he studied clarinet in the concert tradition, performing in CWU’s Wind Ensemble on bass clarinet and Jazz Band 1 in the baritone saxophone chair.

Dave Schumacher & Cubeye: Smoke in the Sky

by Jack Bowers
February 7, 2025

Chicago-bred, New York-based baritone saxophonist Dave Schumacher leans heavily toward Latin melodies and rhythms on Smoke in the Sky, his recording of an able septet he has dubbed Cubeye. Contemporary jazz lies at the core of Schumacher's cross- cultural endeavor, one that his like-minded teammates take readily to heart while lending their insight and expertise to ...

Way Down Low

by Patrick Burnette
January 3, 2025

To start off what is certain to be an interesting new year, Mike and Pat look at leader dates by the deepest of the regularly-used saxophones, the baritone. All four leaders are specialists on the unwieldly horn, though some do dabble in doubling from day to day. Two are composers and one has a crush on ...

Jazz on Soul, Pop, Rock, Folk, and other intangible territories - Part 2

by Artur Moral
November 7, 2024

Part 1 | Part 2 James Carter soloing on a song by Sting? A prolific French guitarist and producer, approaching his thousandth album, deconstructing one of Billy Joel's most candid love songs? A Spanish trumpeter translating the Bee Gees into the jazz language? Yes, all this will happen in this second installment of a ...

Perfection: Byrd and Adams �� Bronze Dance, 1959

September 18, 2024

Trumpeter Donald Byrd and baritone saxophonist Pepper Adams recorded eight albums together between 1959 and 1970. Their combined sound was a perfect fit��Byrd's sweetly piercing trumpet and Adams's grunting attack on the baritone. Their first album together was Byrd in Hand, recorded in May 1959 for Blue Note. The lineup was stunning: Donald Byrd (tp), Charlie ...

David Larsen: Cohesion

by Edward Blanco
August 19, 2024

Baritone saxophonist David Larsen has produced one of the finest albums of pure hard bop music on the jazz landscape of today. Cohesion contains a treasure trove of fresh new original material from Larsen and tenor saxophonist Darryl Yokley. Larsen leads the driving, dark and impassioned sounds of hard bop. His pronounced baritone voice is best ...