Bob Brookmeyer will never forget the day at the Tower Theater in Kansas City in 1941. He was 11 years old when his father took him to hear the Count Basie Band. "The wonderful sound he had - I'd never heard anything like that," says Brookmeyer. "The propulsion and the feel of it all were just unearthly."

It was a life-changing experience, setting Brookmeyer on a path to become the greatest jazz orchestra arranger - and top-valve trombonist - of our time. He has also served as mentor to a generation of young arrangers, including Jim McNeely, Maria Schneider, and the Eastman School of Music's Dave Rivello.

"I was in college when I bought ‘Bob Brookmeyer Live at the Village Vanguard,'" says Rivello. "I knew the bands of Stan Kenton, Count Basie, Bill Evans, and Thad Jones, but when I put the needle down, it just blew my mind. It was a whole new compositional approach using the jazz orchestra."

Rivello will lead the Eastman New Jazz Ensemble in a concert featuring Brookmeyer's arrangements Wednesday, December 2 at Kilbourn Hall. Brookmeyer will play at the concert. He'll also sit in the following night with the Dave Rivello Ensemble when the group records a live CD at the Village Rock Café in East Rochester (the show begins at 9 p.m.).

As a teenager Brookmeyer started on clarinet. When his teeth changed he decided to become a drummer, and worked all summer to buy drums. He picked out a set with an island scene painted on the bass drum, but he never bought it; his band director needed trombones. Investigating the school's horns, he found three European valve trombones.

"They were OK for marching bands 100 years ago," says Brookmeyer. He wouldn't acquire a good one until 1948, after he had graduated. But that didn't stop him. By the age of 14 he was playing in dance bands and writing arrangements for $15 a week.

Listening to him play valve trombone is a unique experience. "It's hard to play; I'm the only one who can play it," says Brookmeyer. He's not bragging - there have been only a handful of players in the entire history of jazz. He added his distinctive sound to several top bands in the 1950's, including those of Stan Getz and Gerry Mulligan. After co-leading a group with Clark Terry, he became an original member of the Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Jazz Orchestra.

Brookmeyer is best known for his ground-breaking compositions and arrangements. The concert will feature charts written for the Terry Gibbs Dreamband, the Gerry Mulligan Concert Jazz Band, Mel Lewis and the Jazz Orchestra, and Brookmeyer's New Art Orchestra. Those are his known works; he also ghost-wrote arrangements early in his career, including several for Ray Charles on "The Genius of Ray Charles" and "Genius Hits The Road."

His charts are eloquent with an edge. "You build up a sound bank in your head. You know what instruments sound like. You know what they'd sound like in a certain harmonic formation. And hopefully sometimes you take a chance and have a what-the-hell phrase in there," Brookmeyer says. At times he has created entire arrangements in his head. An hour's wait for a flight in Paris produced "Airport Song."

"During the 1950's and 1960's, when life was simpler, I would sit at my desk and write. When I got out of rehab [for alcohol abuse in 1976] music had gotten more complex, so I got used to using a keyboard. I still do," he says.

Brookmeyer is no slouch on keyboard; he's a strong enough pianist to have recorded a two-piano album with Bill Evans in 1959.

You can hear the grandeur of his aural vision - including what-the-hell phrases - in "Music for String Quartet and Orchestra" by Brookmeyer and the Metropole Orchestra, with the Gustav Klimt String Quartet. Combining the textural possibilities of the world's largest jazz orchestra and an adventurous quartet (both Netherlands-based), Brookmeyer created a work that transcends genres.

"In the late 1980's/early 1990's I was writing for Mel [Lewis] and I began to write experimental music. I wrote myself out of the band for a while. They let me experiment in Europe," he says.

Brookmeyer takes the music so seriously, he does not believe in the free-ranging solos that often dominate big band performances. "The soloist to me is a compositional continuance. People play solos and they have no consideration for the piece. They play what they learned from Coltrane or whoever. If you look back at early Ellington, a solo was four bars or eight bars, and it was part of the fabric of the piece.

"I'm for giving the soloist any kind of information to guide him, up to and including writing out the solo," Brookmeyer says. "In three years directing the BMI Jazz Workshop in New York I saw too many pieces ruined by a gratuitous solo."

On the other hand, Brookmeyer is well regarded for his own solo work. "When he plays one note, you know it's Brookmeyer," says Rivello. "The lines that he's able to weave on the trombone - there's something about his language that's just incredible."

Brookmeyer celebrates his 80th birthday in December. The Kilbourn concert will feature "Happy Birthday" arrangements by Rivello, McNeely, Bill Holman, John Hollenbeck, and Ryan Truesdell. It promises to be another memorable night in a career filled with highlights. But when asked about his greatest thrill, Brookmeyer turns back to Basie.

"A promoter called me in 1959 to do a concert at Town Hall with Count Basie, Art Taylor, George Duvivier, Pepper Adams, and John Coltrane. I was early and so was Basie, so for about an hour we went next door, had a couple of drinks and chatted.

"I knew Basie's playing pretty well from listening to him in clubs, but standing on the stage with him playing was a surreal experience," Brookmeyer says. "I can never describe it - like being lifted off the ground, past magical. It was one of the best feelings I ever had in my life." There will no doubt be Eastman students who get an inkling of that feeling when they share the stage with Brookmeyer this week.

Bob Brookmeyer

Wednesday, December 2

Kilbourn Hall, 26 Gibbs St.

8 p.m. | Free | 274-1110, esm.rochester.edu