Critics have called saxophonist/composer Rob Reddy “a versatile and adventurous saxophonist” (Scott Yanow, All Music Guide) and “an impressive and open-minded tunesmith” (Troy Collins, AllAboutJazz.com), noting that he “sounds, and dares to sound, like no one but himself” (Brian Morton, Jazz Review). “Since the early 1990s,” wrote Harry Newman in a feature article in Downtown Express, “Rob Reddy has been forging a way uniquely his own as a jazz composer, saxophone player, and bandleader in New York.”
Rob Reddy grew up on the north shore of Long Island, New York. He began studying piano and composing at an early age under the tutelage of a local jazz pianist and composer, Ranny Reeve. Soon after, he began playing saxophone and went on to study with trumpeter Dave Burns, and saxophonists Makanda Ken McIntyre and Dave Liebman. He continued his studies at the New School, earning a BFA through the Jazz and Contemporary Music program.
Since forming his first band in 1989, a trio featuring legendary bassist Reggie Workman and drummer Pheeroan akLaff, Reddy has worked almost exclusively as a leader, with the exception of brief stints with Workman’s ensemble and Ronald Shannon Jackson’s Decoding Society in the early 1990s. For the rest of that decade, Reddy would helm a sextet called Rob Reddy’s Honor System, documented on his first two recordings, Post-War Euphoria (Songlines Recordings) and Songs That You Can Trust (Koch Jazz).
Two other CDs, However Humble (Koch Jazz) and Seeing by the Light of My Own Candle (Knitting Factory Records), would follow early in the new millennium, demonstrating Reddy’s expanding palette, as well as a growing roster of notable collaborators, including bassist Dom Richards, drummer Guillermo E. Brown, violinist Charles Burnham, cellist Rufus Cappadocia, and trumpeter John Carlson, among others.
“I never use composition as a vehicle for improvisation,” Reddy explains, “but rather I utilize improvisation as a tool to support the melodic material. My music is rooted in American folk forms (blues, gospel, country, Appalachian, marches and a wide range of jazz), and my recordings and working ensembles draw on a pool of musicians whose sounds and strengths become an essential part of presenting that music.”
In October 2006, he founded the Reddy Music label, and released A Hundred Jumping Devils, featuring a new sextet called Rob Reddy’s Gift Horse, featuring Burnham, Richards, French hornist Mark Taylor, guitarist Brandon Ross, and percussionist Mino Cinelu. The CD received critical praise and earned Reddy a commission from Chamber Music America to write new music for the ensemble.
His second Reddy Music release, The Book of the Storm, featured an all-star,19-piece ensemble, Rob Reddy’s Small Town, performing the hour-long title piece live at the Tribeca Performing Arts Center. This impressive large-scale work was commissioned by the New York State Council on the Arts and the Jerome Foundation.
In addition to the aforementioned funding, Reddy has also been awarded commissions and grants from the Rockefeller Foundation, Meet the Composer, the Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust, and the American Music Center. He received two artist residencies at the Tribeca Performing Arts Center in New York.
Currently Reddy is composing for Rob Reddy’s Tenfold: an ensemble that includes some of his core group of artists, akLaff, Richards, Ross, Carlson, Burnham, among others. In 2007, Tenfold received a commission from the American Composers Forum and presented a month-long series of performances at the Jalopy Theatre in Brooklyn, NY. He is also composing music, which he plans to present and record, for three new ensembles: The Rob Reddy Sextet; Tales of Virtue and Vice, a drumless chamber ensemble; and All You Can Eat, a raucous, 8-piece electrified ensemble.