Schoenberg, Loren

Schoenberg, Loren, jazz tenor saxophonist, bandleader, author, pianist, radio host; b. Paterson, N.J., July 23, 1958. He began broadcasting in 1972 on WBAI. He entered the Manhattan School of Music as a Music Theory major, piano minor (1976–80). In the interim, he had begun playing the tenor saxophone, and worked in Eddie Durham’s quartet throughout his college years. This association led to work with other leaders, including Al Casey, Jo Jones, Sammy Price, Jabbo Smith, Panama Francis, and the Buck Clayton Orch. (1986–89). In 1979, he produced a tribute to Charlie Parker and Lester Young at Carnegie Recital Hall. The next year, he formed his own big band in N.Y. and began an association with Benny Goodman, first as an archivist and later as his personal manager. After Goodman’s death in 1986, Schoenberg appraised for and was then appointed curator of the Goodman Archives at Yale Univ.; in 1989, he produced a tribute to Goodman at Carnegie Hall. Since 1984, he has been a co-host of Jazz the Archives, a radio program on the NPR station WBGO in Newark, N.J. From 1986–92, he was a member of the American Jazz Orch., and was its musical director and conductor for its final two seasons. Since 1985, his own band has performed frequently for the N.Y. Swing Dance Society as well as at many other venues in and around N.Y.; his band toured the country in 1989. He was the musical director for the International Duke Ellington Conference in 1993 and is an artistic consultant to “Jazz at Lincoln Center.” He has taught at the Manhattan School of Music since 1996 and at the New School since 1992.

Discography

That’s the Way It Goes (1984); Time Waits for No One (1987); Solid Ground (1988); S‘posin’; (1990); Just A-Settin’ and A-Rockin’; (1990); Manhattan Work Song (1992); Out of this World (1997).

—Lewis Porter