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Nick Brignola's 45-year career brought him into contact with many of the most accomplished mainstream improvisers of his generation. Primarily identified with the baritone saxophone, he also performed and recorded using alto and soprano as well as flute and clarinet. Never exactly famous in the U.S. yet greatly appreciated by jazz lovers at home and by the international jazz community at large (especially during his final decade of activity),
Brignola cut more than 20 albums as a leader and worked steadily as a respected sideman and featured guest soloist until shortly before his death in 2002. Born in Troy, NY, on July 17, 1936, he took up the clarinet when he was 11, and also experimented with alto and tenor saxophones and flute. Legend has it the baritone entered his life when he took his alto to a music store for repair and was lent the only member of the saxophone family that they had on hand.
Brignola's first major influence on the big horn was
Duke Ellington's esteemed anchor man
Harry Carney, a Boston native who personally tutored and encouraged the aspiring musician, who had grown up on big bands and bebop.
What appears to be the earliest example of
Nick Brignola on record is
New Designs in Jazz, an album by
the Reese Markewich Quintet dating from 1957. This band grew out of
Markevich's Mark V, a university group that
Brignola joined while studying music at Ithaca College and performed with at the Café Bohemia in Greenwich Village. Largely autodidactic, young
Brignola earned a
Benny Goodman scholarship at Boston's Berklee College of Music in 1958. During that year he recorded with trumpeter
Herb Pomeroy in Boston and initiated a lifelong friendship with drummer
Dick Berk while sitting in with vibraphonist
Cal Tjader at the Blackhawk in San Francisco.
Brignola blew his horns with Woody Herman & His Swingin' Herd in a performance that was taped for Canadian television in 1964 and released on DVD in 2005. His first album as a leader, This Is It!, recorded in 1967 and released on his own Priam label, has since become a collector's item.
Brignola worked a lot with ex-
Mingus trumpeter
Ted Curson. They toured Europe in 1967 and appeared at the Newport and Monterey Jazz Festivals. In 1969,
Brignola led an electric jazz fusion band that opened for
Blood, Sweat & Tears and
Cat Stevens. He is also known to have gigged with musicians as stylistically diverse as pianist
Thelonious Monk; guitarist
Wes Montgomery; drummers
Elvin Jones and
Buddy Rich; clarinetist
Barney Bigard; saxophonist
Dewey Redman; and trumpeters
Miles Davis,
Clark Terry,
Doc Cheatham, and
Chet Baker.
Brignola made his first substantial appearance in a recording studio in 1976 when he was heard as a member of
Curson's seven-piece unit on the Inner City album
Jubilant Power. Equally as impressive was Baritone Madness, recorded in December 1977 in tandem with his idol
Pepper Adams along with
Curson, pianist
Derek Smith, bassist
Dave Holland, and drummer
Roy Haynes. During the year 1978
Brignola collaborated with guitarist
Sal Salvador and tenor saxophonist
Sal Nistico; the following year he masterminded Burn Brigade, a three-baritone blowing session with
Ronnie Cuber and
Cecil Payne, and recorded with trombonist
Bill Watrous. The early '80s saw
Brignola working with the Doug Sertl Big Band and trumpeter
Bobby Shew. In August 1987 he joined his longtime friend
Dick Berk's Jazz Adoption Agency for a tribute album to Tin Pan Alley songwriters
Richard Rodgers and
Lorenz Hart. This was followed by the first of several collaborations with alto saxophonist
Phil Woods, an appearance with the Big Band Charlie Mingus live at the Theatre Boulogne-Billancourt in Paris, and a pair of amazing quartet albums featuring pianist
Kenny Barron with bassists
Dave Holland and
George Mraz and drummers
Jack DeJohnette and
Billy Hart.
It wasn't until the 1990s that
Brignola began to achieve recognition commensurate with his abilities and accomplishments. Two thrilling quartet sets were recorded live at Sweet Basil in New York City, several projects involved trumpeters
Claudio Roditi and
Randy Brecker, and tribute albums were dedicated to
Gerry Mulligan and
Lee Morgan. In 1993 he revisited the plugged-in textures of his erstwhile fusion band by forming a group called
Endangered Species (no relation to the similarly named Chicago-based rappers). After sitting in with
Frank Mantooth's big band, a visit to Europe in March 1994 enabled
Brignola to record live in Munich with
Chris Barber's Jazz & Blues Band (a Continental edition largely comprised of Dutchmen), and to be featured with
Ronnie Cuber in a group led by Netherlandish pianist
Rein de Graaff on the album Baritone Explosion!
Brignola recorded with singing guitarist
Michael Jerling, cabaret-style jazz vocalist
Spider Saloff, vibraphonist
Dave Pike, and guitarist
Randy Johnston. He was heard on guitarist
Tony Purrone's salute to saxophonist
Jimmy Heath and another
Gerry Mulligan tribute album, this time by
the Three Baritone Saxophone Band featuring
Brignola,
Cuber, and
Gary Smulyan.
Nick Brignola's final accomplishments included writing supportive liner notes for Latina by Proxy, an album by Seattle-based soprano and baritone saxophonist Wenda Zonnefeld, and cutting an album with Toronto jazz trio
D.E.W. East (
Alex Dean,
Barry Elmes, and
Steve Wallace). On the album
Tour de Force, destined to be his last recording,
Brignola was backed by guitarist
Chuck D'Aloia, bassist
Eddie Gomez, drummer
Bill Stewart, and a percussionist identified only as
Café.
Nick Brignola taught music theory and jazz history at colleges within commuting distance of his home in Eagle Mills, not far from his birthplace in Troy, NY. He lost his battle with cancer on February 8, 2002, in Albany. The College of Saint Rose, where he helped to establish jazz studies in the curriculum, now has a scholarship named after him. ~ arwulf arwulf