Neil Bridge hasn’t skipped a beat, even in loss of life.
The Denver jazz musician, who died at age 94 on Dec. 7, 2023, taught a whole bunch of scholars and performed hundreds of gigs over his seven-decade profession. Sporting a goatee and understated grin, he traveled the size of the Western Hemisphere, minting and mentoring notables similar to Grammy- and Tony-winning Denver natives Don Cheadle and Ron Miles.
However his last gig — at Dazzle Jazz on Oct. 6, 2023, simply two days earlier than he entered the ICU — is not going to be the final likelihood to listen to his music stay.
“I’m nonetheless signing each card and e-mail as ‘Neil in Heaven, Karen on Earth,’ ” stated Karen Lee Bridge, the vocalist in Neil’s bands and his spouse of 31 years. “(At) this present on Might 16 on the Denver Press Membership, I do know he’ll be with us, preserving his legacy alive.”
The deliberate efficiency follows Neil’s funeral companies on Jan. 19 at Fort Logan Nationwide Cemetery, the place the Air Pressure offered a tri-folded American flag to Karen. It sits on the sofa within the rental residence Neil and Karen shared in south Denver, surrounded by neat stacks of music notation, black-and-white images, flyers, awards and applications tracing Neil’s cultivation of Colorado’s jazz scene.
“It’s loopy to go down the listing of all of the individuals who went by his combo,” stated Andrew Hudson, a former scholar of Neil’s who performed bass on 20 or so gigs with him over the previous decade. “Again within the days when Denver Public Colleges really funded music training, he led the Citywide Excessive College Jazz Combo (beginning in 1978). They toured everywhere in the nation and produced among the finest jazz musicians and educators in your complete nation.”
About 250 folks showed up to pay their respects at Neil’s vigorous funeral, and Karen organized musical tribute to her husband at Horan and McConaty funeral residence that includes former college students and jazz heavies Nelson Rangell, David Pearl and Greg Carroll — amongst many others. This system reads like a set listing.
“He hand-wrote each chart together with his beloved Ticonderoga No. 2 pencil,” Karen stated of the dozen-plus, foot-high piles of sheet-music crowding her front room and kitchen desk, with extra upstairs. “He performed to the abilities of everybody in his band and wrote only for them.”
Neil couched his piano-playing in beneficiant quantities of horns, strings, percussion and vocals, from salsa to swing. He would observe whereas sitting at his grand piano upstairs; Karen would do her vocal work on the downstairs child grand, each of them plinking and rehearsing late into the night time. A video of Neil taking part in at Dazzle at 92 years previous reveals him pointing to members for solos, hitting precision chords and scatting joyfully behind the keys.
A few yr later, he would change into one of many oldest jazz musicians within the nation — at age 93 — to ever launch an album of newly recorded materials, “In the Key of Music.” Its liner notes are additionally beneficiant, thanking dozens of different musicians, together with his 9 bandmates.
Neil’s profession spawned many others’, regardless of not but being acknowledged by the Colorado Music Corridor of Fame. Denver Mayor Michael Hancock carved out June 16 for Neil Bridge Day every year, the plaque for which nonetheless hangs within the Bridge’s cozy, overstuffed basement. So does his official recognition from the 5 Factors Jazz Fest, which famous his historical past with jazz greats and his years as an educator (there’s even a room named after him at Denver School of the Arts).
It sits alongside different honors for the Bridge’s shared volunteer and training efforts — and lots of footage of Neil beaming together with his college students — in addition to orange-and-blue memorabilia marking his time with the Denver Broncos Band. That features a trip to London in 1987, within the early levels of the John Elway years.
Neil was born on Aug. 18, 1929, in Kutztown, Penn., the place he grew up throughout the Nice Despair. He moved to New York Metropolis after highschool and dove into the legendary jazz scene on 52nd Avenue in Greenwich Village, getting an off-the-cuff music training by watching Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, Miles Davis, Charlie Parker, Tito Puente, Dizzy Gillespie, Stan Getz and others on stage.
He then moved to Roswell, N.M., for the Air Pressure and gained a GI Invoice scholarship. There he honed his chops of their jazz band and, finally, on the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, all whereas gigging 5 or 6 nights per week. He moved to Colorado in 1958 to show at Sheridan Union Excessive.
“Once I first moved to Denver (from Boston) there have been three or 4 piano gamers on the town, and we had been all pleasant,” Bridge informed JS in 2011. “However then each place had a piano. Even the crummiest joint had one. …”
And but, there have been few alternatives for up-and-coming jazz lovers on the town. Quickly Bridge was educating music at Denver Public Colleges, and rapidly grew to become “a pioneer and shining mild on the planet of music training” amid his busy skilled profession, Karen stated. He additionally racked up spectacular gigs accompanying Cab Calloway, Nancy Wilson, Mel Torme, Toots Thielemans and different beloved jazz artists.
That’s after spending three a long time backing up Johnny Smith, the jazz-guitar virtuoso who wrote the music “Stroll, Don’t Run” in 1954; it went on to change into an everlasting instrumental-rock hit after being recorded by The Ventures in 1960.
Karen plans to maintain his flame burning. She’s going to proceed performing his voluminous, hand-written preparations, together with at a deliberate, Might 4 gig at Sedalia’s Cherokee Ranch & Citadel, and is taking a look at different methods to maintain his identify on the scene. Johnny Smith recordings (he too was a Coloradan) that function Neil Bridge Trio are additionally getting re-released within the coming months, having just lately been found, stated Craig and Mark Patterson, the sons of Dick Patterson, Neil’s bass participant.
“He at all times stated, ‘By no means attempt to outdo the viewers,’ ” Karen stated, noting that she and Neil first fell in love after he invited her to a present at late Denver jazz hangout El Chapultepec. ” ‘In the event that they’re consuming and partying, you attempt to sing smooth. If it’s the other, do the other. Don’t ever attempt to overwhelm them. Simply allow them to simply keep it up whilst you do. That’s the way you get them.’ “
