Rob McConnell

Rob McConnell & The Boss Brass – Tribute (1981/2015)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 42:13 minutes | 768 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © MPS

Award-winning Trombonist-arranger-composer Rob McConnell and his Boss Brass big band was a fixture on the Canadian jazz scene. The group was composed of Canada’s premiere jazz musicians, and many of their over two dozen albums have become collectors’ items for big band enthusiasts world-wide. Tribute was the second of three albums released by MPS.

(more…)

Rob McConnell & The Boss Brass – Present Perfect (1980/2014)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 46:12 minutes | 900 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © MPS

Late Canadian jazz musician Rob McConnell’s talents as a bandleader, arranger and trombonist are spotlighted on the Juno Award-winning Present Perfect. Notably, on the standard Smoke Gets in Your Eyes, he plays an adventurously off-kilter lead-in to the melody and then delivers a brilliant valve trombone solo. McConnell and his 22-piece brass band (including rhythm and reed sections) recorded this album in 1979 in Toronto and mixed it in Germany.

(more…)

Rob McConnell – The Rob McConnell Sextet: Old Friends / New Music (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 42:13 minutes | 413 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Cornerstone Records Inc.

Rob McConnell learned to play the valve trombone in high school and began his career as a professional musician in the early 1950s in Canadian dance bands with Don Thompson, Bobby Gimby, and later in Maynard Ferguson’s big band. From 1965 he played in the formation Nimmons’n’Nine Plus Six of the arranger and clarinetist Phil Nimmons. In 1968, he formed his big band The Boss Brass, with which he worked throughout the 1970s and 1980s, including with the vocal group The Singers Unlimited (1979).

(more…)