eJazzNews Archive

Rob McConnell Dies

Originally published on eJazzNews · · Obituaries

In May 2010, eJazzNews reported the death of Rob McConnell, the Canadian valve trombonist, arranger and composer who led the big band the Boss Brass for three decades. He died in a Toronto hospital on May 1, 2010, at the age of 75, after a long battle with cancer. The text of the eJazzNews report was not preserved by the Internet Archive; the report is cited in Wikipedia’s lists of deaths for May 2010 in German, Polish and Russian. This page sets out the facts of his death and career from other published sources.

The Boss Brass

McConnell was born in London, Ontario, on February 14, 1935, and raised in Toronto. He began his career in 1954 in Edmonton with the band of saxophonist Don Thompson, worked in Toronto with Bobby Gimby, and in 1964 moved to New York to play in Maynard Ferguson’s big band. In 1968 he formed the Boss Brass from Toronto studio musicians: 16 players at first, with trumpets, trombones, French horns and a rhythm section but no saxophones. A saxophone section and a fifth trumpet were added in the 1970s, bringing the band to 22 members.

The CBC called it one of Canada’s most popular jazz ensembles. Its albums Big Band Jazz (1978), Present Perfect (1981) and All in Good Time (1984) won Juno Awards, and it worked with singers including Mel Tormé, with whom it made an album for Concord Jazz in 1986. Guitarist Ed Bickert and trumpeter Guido Basso were long-time associates; Basso played in the Boss Brass from 1968 until McConnell became too ill to continue. In tribute, Basso told the CBC that McConnell “heard things the rest of us didn’t,” taking a familiar song and reharmonizing it to bring out the melody.

Grammys and honors

The Recording Academy lists three Grammy wins for McConnell: Best Jazz Instrumental Performance, Big Band, for All in Good Time at the 1984 awards; Best Arrangement on an Instrumental for “Strike Up the Band” in 1993; and Best Instrumental Arrangement with Accompanying Vocal(s) for “I Get a Kick Out of You” in 1996. He received more than a dozen further nominations between 1979 and 2004. He was inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame in 1997 and appointed an Officer of the Order of Canada in 1998.

The last years

In the 2000s McConnell led the Rob McConnell Tentet, a smaller group drawn largely from Boss Brass alumni, which recorded three albums for Justin Time between 2000 and 2003: Rob McConnell Tentet, Thank You, Ted and Music of the Twenties. The Boss Brass came together one last time with him at a reunion during the Toronto Jazz Festival in 2009, the last time he and Basso played together. For the instrument he played, see our guide to jazz instruments.

Where to start listening

  • Rob McConnell and the Boss Brass, All in Good Time: the big band album that won his first Grammy.
  • Mel Tormé, Rob McConnell and the Boss Brass (Concord Jazz, 1986): the band with one of the singers it worked with most closely.
  • Rob McConnell Tentet, Rob McConnell Tentet (Justin Time, 2000): the smaller group of his last decade.

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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