Times Staff
This Sunday's free 7 p.m. concert at Stage Fort Park will honor the jazz genius of a Gloucester native who abandoned his medical studies to follow his musical muse.
The special Herb Pomeroy Tribute Concert at the Antonio Gentile Bandstand will feature Donna Byrne and the Herb Pomeroy Band with Greg Hopkins, and will include tunes from the songbook they used for many years while together.
Pomeroy was an influential swing and bebop jazz trumpeter. He played with jazz legends as Charlie Parker and Lionel Hampton as well as his own jazz bands for over half a century. He was also a teacher and band leader at Berklee College of Music in Boston, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Lenox School of Music.
After a long and celebrated career as a musician and teacher, Pomeroy passed away in August 2007 following a lengthy battle with cancer. This concert marks the first time his band members have played together since the bandstand concert at Stage Fort Park the weekend after Pomeroy passed away.
It is also a return of sorts for longtime Pomeroy collaborator Byrne, according to concert organizer David Benjamin.
"Byrne was greatly affected by Herb's death and she decided to retire soon after his passing," he said. "August 9 will be Byrne's first public performance in quite a while."
In honor of Pomeroy, the musicians are donating their fees to the Herb Pomeroy Scholarship Fund at Berklee.
Born and raised in Gloucester, Pomeroy began playing trumpet at an early age, and in his early teens he started playing around Greater Boston. In 1946, at age 16, he became a member of the Musicians Union in Gloucester after the union didn't have enough members to conduct a meeting. After high school, he studied music at the Schillinger House in Boston, which is now the Berklee College of Music, where he excelled as a jazz trumpeter and began to find his calling in bebop.
"Herb was the son of a local Gloucester dentist and was supposed to follow in the family footsteps," remembers Ba Benjamin, "He went to pre-med for one year and quickly abandoned that and decided to become a jazz musician. His mother was a local piano teacher here in Gloucester. She encouraged him to follow his dreams, musically."
Herb Pomeroy did study dentistry at Harvard University for one year but dropped out to pursue his jazz career. Charlie Parker hired him frequently when the alto saxophonist performed at Boston's Hi-Hat and Storyville.
Pomeroy also played with Lionel Hampton, Duke Ellington, Stan Kenton, and Serge Chaloff, among other jazz giants. After experience as a sideman in the big bands of Hampton and Stan Kenton, Pomeroy put together a big band that drew national attention in the late 1950s in a Boston club called the Stable. He led the band from 1957 through the mid-1960s and frequently until 1993. His big band played in Carnegie Hall and in the Newport Jazz Festival on the same bill with Benny Goodman, Duke Ellington, and other major jazz figures. Pomeroy also backed up many singers, including Mel Torme, Tony Bennett, Irene Kral, Ella Fitzgerald, and Frank Sinatra.
The remainder of the 2009 Summer Concert Series will take place on Saturday, Aug. 15 and Sunday, Aug. 23. For more information on these events and other Cape Ann musical happenings, see "Tunes on the Town," on page 10.
