Friday October 8 * doors 630 / music 7 * outside at Rhizome * TICKETS

Julius Watkins (Detroit, MI October 10, 1921 – Short Hills, NJ April 4, 1977), is the quintessential French horn player in jazz-centric music. Watkins likely recorded the first improvised solo on the French horn for Milt Buckner in 1949, and was the first French horn player to lead a small combo with a major recording date, putting out two EPs with Blue Note in 1954. Having recorded with Stan Kenton, Gigi Gryce, Oscar Pettiford, Thelonious Monk, John Coltrane, Gil Evans, Miles Davis, Quincy Jones, Pharoah Sanders, Charles Mingus, Mary Lou Williams, the Composers Workshop Ensemble, the Jazz Contemporaries and so, so many others, Watkins helped usher the sound and location of jazz in America through dance bands, to small combos in the bebop era, all the way through more spiritual and free records of the early 70s. Towards the end of his life, Watkins began to grow into the role of mentor and teacher to the few (but powerful) French horn players working in creative music, teaching such modern greats as Vincent Chancey, Marshall Sealy, and John Clark.

Abe Mamet is part of the third generation of Watkins-led horn players - his own teacher, John Clark, was part of the small cohort of Watkins students in the late 1970s. As part of a weekend of global festivities led in part by Abe, Rhizome will host a celebration of the life of Julius Watkins with a program that explores the French horn's musical place in both its past and its future, while acknowledging and honoring the many struggles its forebears faced, from racial discrimination to unstable support networks. Abe will be joined by Stephen Arnold on bass, Joe Palmer on drums, and Sarah Hughes on saxophone.