Bob Northern
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Robert "Bob" Northern (b. 1934), known professionally as Brother Ah, is an American jazz French hornist.
Born in North Carolina and raised in The Bronx, Northern studied at the Manhattan School of Music and at the Vienna State Academy in the 1950s. He is perhaps best known as a session musician, working extensively in the 1950s and 1960s with musicians such as Donald Byrd, John Coltrane, Gil Evans, Sun Ra, McCoy Tyner, Roland Kirk, and the Jazz Composers Orchestra.[1] He also worked with Don Cherry, Thelonious Monk, Freddie Hubbard, Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie, Eric Dolphy, Charlie Haden, and John Lewis.
He lived in New York City during the late 1960s, and after a period of increasing interest in non-Western music, lived in Ghana from 1972-73.[2] In the 1970s he released several albums as a bandleader; his 1974 release Sound Awareness featured Max Roach. These albums were reissued on CD on the Ikef Records label in the 2000s. In addition to horn playing, Northern also branched into percussion performance later in his career.[3] He taught at Brown University from 1980 to 1982 and then at the Levine School of Music in Washington, D.C. from 1982.[2] Northern is also the founder of the World Music Ensemble, a group which explores both African and American musical traditions.[4]
[edit] Discography
- Sound Awareness (Strata-East Records, 1974)
- Move Ever Onward (Divine Records, 1975)
- Key to Nowhere (Divine Records)
- Celebration (Mapleshade Records, 1993)
[edit] References
- ^ Bob Northern at All Music Guide
- ^ a b Profile at Mapleshade Records
- ^ Sea of Sounds. Citypaper (Baltimore), July 24, 2002.
- ^ Smithsonian Education
