JALC presents JazzStories—Joe Henderson's 'Rehearsal Band'

In 1967, shortly after leaving Horace Silver’s band, saxophonist Joe Henderson was “just walking around New York looking for something to do.” A conversation with his friend, trumpeter Kenny Dorham, led to the formation of a 17-piece big band, featuring some of the jazz scene’s brightest stars. Members of the rotating cast included Chick Corea, Joe Temperley, Ron Carter, Randy Brecker and Lew Soloff, among others. But the band, which worked on charts written by Henderson as well as Dorham and Jimmy Heath, never recorded an album or even played a show. Instead it was a laboratory for Henderson to work on musical ideas with players who understood the language of jazz. In 1992 JALC reunited several original members of the legendary “rehearsal band” along with additional musicians to perform some of this never-before-heard big band material. Henderson sat down with jazz writer Bill Brower to talk about this project, undertaken solely “for the love of the music.”