Life recently turned topsy for Tucson native and celebrated jazz bassist Brian Bromberg and that’s got him to thinking that he’s due for a change.
“I’m just trying to figure it out,” he said during a call early this month to talk about his HSL Properties Tucson Jazz Festival show Thursday, Jan. 23, at Rialto Theatre. “My sisters live in Tucson. I was even thinking about maybe coming back there for a while.”
Tucson native and veteran jazz bassist Brian Bromberg is bringing his Unapologetically Funky Big Bombastic Band to the HSL Properties Tucson Jazz Festival on Thursday, Jan. 23.
Moving back home to Tucson might have been career suicide a few years ago, but Bromberg, who has lived in Southern California since the late 1980s, said the industry has evolved, especially during the pandemic.
“Everything’s done through the internet,” said the 64-year-old, who has been playing professionally since high school. “Everything’s done with samples and digital libraries and all this stuff. ... So I can basically live anywhere.”
“I did three records completely in quarantine,” he added, explaining that other musicians working from home sent him digital files that he worked with at his home studio. “Everything has completely changed because of technology. ... I think the pandemic just sealed the deal for the industry, because it’s like, man, you don’t have to come into a studio anymore. You don’t have to do this with all these people. ... We can just do it.”
That might work on the recording end of music, but not when Bromberg and his Unapologetically Funky Big Bombastic Band takes the Rialto stage Thursday. It’s his first show of 2025, and it comes weeks after he did a show at Hotel Congress’s Century Room in December.
“It’s totally about the moment. Everybody’s creating the music instantaneously, organically, together at the same time,” he said. “You can’t replace that with anything. Creating music is about that moment, and then that moment’s gone.”
That’s a lesson Bromberg learned in junior high school, when he started playing gigs around town. By his junior year at Tucson High, he was studying with and working with Jeff Haskell, an Emmy-winning arranger and performer who ran the jazz studies program the University of Arizona.
Bromberg said Haskell tapped him for gigs with UA ensembles and he played with other artists around town almost nightly. Attending high school had become an afterthought so Bromberg, with his parents’ blessings, dropped out and got his GED.
When he was 18, he auditioned for noted saxophonist Stan Getz’s band and never looked back. He toured internationally with Getz for several years before going solo in the 1980s. He’s released 27 albums including the jazz trio project “LaFaro” with Tom Zink and Charles Ruggiero in April.
For his jazz fest show, Bromberg will have as many as 12 musicians on stage including full horn section and special guests Michael Paulo on saxophone and Paul Brown on guitar.
“It’s going to be really fun,” he said. “I am seriously looking forward to it.”
Thursday’s show at the Rialto, 318 E. Congress St., starts at 7:30 p.m. Tickets, $35-$62, are available through rialtotheatre.com.
Brian Bromberg and his bandmate from BPM Jazz, guitarist Paul Brown will be playing at the Tucson Jazz Festival at the Rialto Theatre as part of Bromberg's Unapologetically Funky Big Bombastic Band featuring Michael Paulo at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 23, at Rialto Theatre. Tickets are available through rialtotheatre.com
