Hal Crook Celebrates Retirement with Concert Featuring Esperanza Spalding, Antonio Sanchez, Lionel Loueke, Chris Cheek and Others

Hal Crook '71, world-renowned jazz trombonist and educator, is retiring after 30 years at Berklee. Crook will celebrate with a concert featuring his former students: bassist, vocalist, and Grammy Award-winner Esperanza Spalding '05, drummer Antonio Sanchez '97, guitarist Lionel Loueke '04, pianist Leo Genovese '01, and saxophonist Chris Cheek '91. Also appearing will be Behind These Eyes, Crook’s pop-jazz band featuring alumna vocalist Deborah Pierre '13, along with students, alumni, and Boston-based players. Additional artists will be announced soon.

The Music of Hal Crook: Set Me Free takes place Thursday, February 18, at 8:00 p.m. at the Berklee Performance Center, 136 Massachusetts Avenue, Boston. Tickets at $12, $18, and $24 are on sale now at the Berklee Performance Center Box Office, and at Berklee.edu/bpc. The concert is part of the 2016 Signature Series at Berklee.

Crook has influenced countless jazz musicians during his career. By diversifying his teaching methods with rigorous training in jazz theory and performance exercises, he has helped many of the world’s best-known jazz improvisers to discover their own voice and style. In addition to Spalding, Genovese, and Cheek, he has taught Grammy Award–winners Roy Hargrove, Antonio Sanchez, and Danilo Perez, and acclaimed musicians Ingrid Jensen, Mark Turner, Miguel Zenon, and Julian Lage, among many others.

“Hal is a living example of the quintessential no-nonsense, bad 'mofo.' That seems to be the rarest breed of human on the planet these days,” says Spalding. “He'll play you under the table—on trombone! Can you believe it?—and then tell you exactly where you're weak and/or why you're stuck in your development as a player. And, he'll tell you straight up so you know exactly what to go home and work on. In fact, I think I'll finally go start shedding the stuff he told me to work on, because I have to play this ‘All-Hail the Great Hal Crook’ concert in a few weeks and I don't want to sound like an ass.” 

Watch Hal Crook's band Behind These Eyes perform:

Upon graduating from Berklee in 1971, Crook established an active playing career throughout the United States, Europe, and Asia, performing with Clark Terry, the Phil Woods Quintet, Bob Brookmeyer, James Brown, Tony Bennett, Woody Herman, Lionel Hampton, Paul Motian, and Mick Goodrick, among others. He composed, arranged, and performed for the NBC Tonight Show Orchestra. More than 40 albums list Crook as a leader or sideman, including Phil Woods’s 1997 Grammy-nominated album Celebration.

Crook taught at Berklee briefly in the mid-1970s, before rejoining the faculty in 1986. His four books on jazz improvisation and his numerous play-along recordings are distributed throughout the world and continue to influence thousands of players. He founded music schools in Rhode Island and San Diego, and taught at the University of California in Los Angeles and San Diego. He has been a visiting artist in residence at the Thelonious Monk Institute, and at the Dave Brubeck Institute. Crook will continue to teach privately at his studio in Attleboro, Massachusetts. 

Watch highlights from the February 18 performance: