eJazzNews Archive

Dave Rivello Ensemble: Facing the Mirror

Originally published on eJazzNews · · CD Reviews

On November 22, 2009, eJazzNews reviewed Facing the Mirror, the debut album of the Dave Rivello Ensemble, a twelve-piece band led by the Rochester composer and Eastman School of Music teacher Dave Rivello. The full review was not preserved, but the Eastman School quoted it in its news report for November 2009. Rivello still teaches at Eastman and has since written a book on his mentor Bob Brookmeyer, who died in 2011.

What the 2009 review said

According to the passage Eastman reproduced, the review introduced Rivello as an Eastman educator and a former student of the composer and arranger Bob Brookmeyer. It said the band had been pared down from a 17-piece orchestra to twelve players, and that Facing the Mirror was its recording debut, with eight original compositions and arrangements. The reviewer heard modern mainstream writing layered with sophisticated harmonies, and stressed that this was not a typical big band sound, set apart from both traditional swing and classical big band writing.

The album

The New York blog Lucid Culture, reviewing the disc in September 2009, reported that it had been recorded in 2002 and only recently released, and described the group as a Rochester-based twelve-piece orchestra playing eight mostly original pieces, several of them longer than ten minutes. That review named the tracks “One by One by One,” “Of Time and Time Past,” “Stealing Space,” “Beyond the Fall” and “The Path of Innocence,” with solos by pianist Red Wierenga, trumpeter Mike Kaupa, Matt Pivec on soprano saxophone and Jose Encarnacion on tenor. A review quoted on Rivello’s own website adds trumpeter Eli Asher as a soloist on the opening track and names the closing piece, “Chorale.” Rivello’s site also says the Village Voice Jazz Critics Poll chose the album as the best debut of its year.

Dave Rivello and Bob Brookmeyer

Rivello earned his bachelor’s degree at the Dana School of Music at Youngstown State University, with a double major in trumpet performance and music education, and moved to Rochester in 1987 for a master’s degree in jazz and contemporary writing at Eastman. As a student there he won a DownBeat award for best original extended composition. He has worked as a music copyist for Brookmeyer, Joseph Schwantner, Kenny Werner, Manny Albam and others, and directs Eastman’s New Jazz Ensemble.

Brookmeyer, born in Kansas City on December 19, 1929, first came to wide attention as the valve trombonist in Gerry Mulligan’s quartet from 1954 to 1957, part of the cool jazz scene. He was musical director of the Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Orchestra from 1979, and Eastman’s 2009 announcement noted that his composition students had included Maria Schneider and Jim McNeely. That same month, eJazzNews also announced an Eastman concert for his 80th birthday, set for December 2, 2009, in Kilbourn Hall. Brookmeyer was to play with the New Jazz Ensemble under Rivello, and five composer friends of his, Bill Holman, Jim McNeely, John Hollenbeck, Ryan Truesdell and Rivello himself, wrote short new pieces based on “Happy Birthday” for the occasion.

What happened next

Brookmeyer died on December 15, 2011, in New London, New Hampshire, at the age of 81. According to his website, Rivello has since written Bob Brookmeyer in Conversation with Dave Rivello, published through ArtistShare, with an accompanying app of sketches, scores, audio and video of Brookmeyer’s music. He is an associate professor of jazz studies and contemporary media at Eastman. His website also says the Dave Rivello Ensemble was named a Rising Star Big Band in DownBeat in 2023.

Sources

This page is based on an article from the original eJazzNews archive (2001 to 2018), with background and sources added in 2026. The original text is not republished here.
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