Rick Braun & Richard Elliot
@ the PizzaExpress Jazz Club
23 - 25 February 2010

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Rick Braun biography

If Allentown, Pennsylvania native Rick Braun had his way, he would be a drummer today. Braun traces his critical decision to the third grade at Allentown's now-demolished Stevens Elementary School. "With a big family and a small house, drums weren't exactly smiled upon. The trumpet, his eventual instrument of choice, was a “little less painful” for other family members than his other choice - the violin. Today, no one is complaining.

The form and direction of Braun’s musical career has changed over time, however. While attending the prestigious Eastman School of Music, Braun took up with other like-minded musicians and formed a group, Auracle, a jazz-fusion group.

Auracle recorded two albums - both out of print - before disbanding. “Auracle was a lot more adventurous and complicated than the other fusion groups that were working at the time, so that meant we were doomed to failure,” Braun said.

The first of Braun’s big breaks in the business came in the area of songwriting and being a background musician/vocalist. One of the tunes he wrote for REO Speedwagon, “Here With Me,” hit the Billboard Top 20.

Braun’s move to contemporary jazz came about by accident. He traveled to Toronto to shop several demo tapes. One music publisher who listened to Braun’s instrumentals suggested that he contact Mesa/Bluemoon, whose main offices, ironically, were about two miles from Braun’s Studio City home.

In ‘93, Rick released his first solo album on Mesa, “Intimate Secrets”. In ‘94, the composer and producer released “Night Walk”. Braun was the touring trumpeter for Sade on the “Love Deluxe” tour and that influence resulted in a huge leap for him in style and content from his first to second album. Listening to “Night Walk” is almost like listening to Sade instrumentally. “Night Walk” grabbed Adult Alternative’s top Most Added honours. In that same year, ‘94, Braun also released “Christmas Present”.

Braun’s 1995 album “Beat Street”, led the pack again. His influence for this he says is thinking back on his days in War’s touring band in the mid ‘80’s. After the fact, those memories had a major musical impact on his writing and on our ears.

“This is definitely a more spontaneous recording than anything I've done before. Instead of sitting in a room by myself, composing the music before going into the studio, I just took my inspiration from a bunch of guys getting together and playing, with no idea of what we were going to come up with”.

Braun has worked as a sideman, touring with such rock and pop stars as Rickie Lee Jones, Sade, Rod Stewart, Tina Turner, Glenn Frey, Natalie Cole, Tom Petty, Crowded House, Phoebe Snow and of course, War. In addition to recording and touring as a solo artist, Braun has virtually become an in-house producer for record label Mesa/Bluemoon. In the past few years, he’s held the creative reins on several critically acclaimed projects, including two albums for acoustic guitarist Peppino D’Agostino, two for guitar and violin duo Willie and Lobo, and a radio chart-topping contemporary jazz album by Avenue Blue.

Richard Elliot biography

The Scotland born, L.A. raised Elliot found his musical voice on tenor as a teenager and landed his first professional gig touring with Natalie Cole and The Pointer Sisters while he was still in high school. Before joining Tower of Power-which began a stretch that he calls the most influential period of my early career-he played in the adventurous fusion band Kittyhawk and did some dream recording sessions with his Motown heroes Smokey Robinson, The Four Tops and The Temptations. He later performed with Melissa Manchester and Yellowjackets, which found him hooking up for the first time with the legendary fusion band's founding drummer Ricky Lawson.

Elliot was still on the road with TOP when he released his debut album Trolltown in 1986. Its success gave him the confidence to leave the band and start a solo career which has been seriously rockin’ steady ever since. Embarking upon one of instrumental music’s most dynamic and multi-faceted career, Elliot’s sound played a huge part in pioneering the genre and radio format that became today’s contemporary urban jazz. Over the years, he has scored four #1 albums, “On The Town”, “Soul Embrace”, “After Dark” and “Jumpin’ Off” and a growing number of #1 airplay singles.

In addition to his participation in the current decade's all-star tours like Groovin’ For Grover and Jazz Attack, in the mid-90s he helped launch another of the genre’s annual franchises, the Guitars & Saxes tours, which he continues to participate in. At his peak, Elliot was annually doing over 100 tour dates, but he has scaled back to spend more time with his family.

Outside of music, Elliot has been an entrepreneur engaged in the latest emerging technologies. In the 90s, he co-founded the cutting edge multi-media company PacificNet that served some of the giants of the corporate business, entertainment and sports industries. At one point, the company-which created important music related systems like Code Sonics-employed 50 people. He is currently a partner in World Processing, a company that provides effective and convenient ways for people to move their money around via “stored value cards” and mobile devices.