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ABOUT

"Wonderful melodies and beautiful tunes!"

- Maggie Scott, Berklee College of Music

"Richard's heart and intellect speak out in every number, complemented by the instrumental and vocal solos which seize your attention."

-Alan W Stone MD

"These are terrific recordings, and I think the musicians are wonderful. Your music is lovely, Richard, and As Far as We Can is one that I keep singing to myself! Congratulations, and thanks for sharing."

-

Hilary Field Respass | Executive Director |

Tanglewood Institute

Dick Budson has played the clarinet since he was 11 years old when he first heard the instrument’s mellow vibrato tones on the radio and asked what it was. Dick has long speculated that it was Benny Goodman that he heard….since his sound has been one he has emulated through the years.  

 

By the time he was 17-years-old, he was jamming late Saturday nights with famous jazz guitarist Kenny Burrell, at the West End Hotel in deep downtown Detroit. 

 

The summer before he started college, a remarkable event occurred while dining alone at a French restaurant, Henri Quatre, in Montreal, Canada when he noted a man entering the restaurant who had a clarinet case under his arm. Dick quickly caught his eye and motioned to him to come over and join him for dinner.  And by the end of the evening, he realized that he had dined with Jimmy Hamilton, Duke Ellington’s clarinetist.  And this remarkable coincidence resulted in a friendship that lasted the next four years! While Dick was at Harvard College, he went to George Wein’s Storyville each time Duke Ellington came into town and sat in the front row before the band. Jimmy sat with him during of the breaks. Dick came to love the sound of Jimmy Hamilton, as he played a French Buffet clarinet and he had a mellow almost classical sound that Dick admired and worked to adapt through the years.

 

Once a student at Harvard College, Dick organized a jazz quartet that played “jolley-ups”; dances between Harvard and Radcliffe dorms. After attaining a Professorship at Harvard Medical School, he met Maggie Scott…pianist singer on the Board of the Berklee College of Music …playing at Zachary’s Lounge at the Colonnade Hotel in Boston. She invited him to her studio where over several weeks of work, they developed 40 tunes together and she said, “with this list of tunes under your belt, you can come and sit in any night at the lounge”. Dick regards this tutorial with Maggie as a foremost preparation for his growing jazz career.

 

Several years later Dick played a duo with Paul McWilliams on piano, at the Quiet Bar at Rarities in the Charles Hotel at Harvard Square, every Thursday night from 9-11 PM. After two years of building a comfortable musical rapport together, Paul suggested making a CD along with bassist Peter Kontrimas, who had a famous music recording studio in the Boston suburbs. The CD turned out to be very successful, becoming a favorite of Dick’s friends, and was played on the jazz radio station WGBH in Boston (Also available for listening here). The number “Dick’s Blues” is also featured on the CD of Dick’s compositions. In this instance, a new “composition” occurred completely by happenstance, when Peter said at the beginning, ”Let’s warm up”…and Paul started with a musical introduction on the piano Dick had never heard before. Dick then “on the spot” invented an entirely new tune which became the favorite of his fans.

 

Retiring from Harvard Medical School after 35 years, in 1998, Dick arrived in Washington, DC where he worked for 20 years as an Executive Vice President of a national medical financial management company. In those years in Washington, he played regularly with Alex Jenkins at Restaurant 701 and Marcel’s.

 

The past ten years have been a time of fresh musical growth for Dick, which he attributes to the generosity and warmth of pianist Bob Sykes. Sykes just retired as Chairman of Jazz Keyboard at the Levine School of Music and was sought by Dick for jazz piano lessons. However, an unexpected event occurred. Dick, without thinking about it too seriously, handed at the end of a lesson on the piano, the jazz CD he did on clarinet with his trio in Boston, several years earlier. And Bob Sykes started Dick’s next piano lesson a week later telling Dick how much he liked his clarinet sound….and invited Dick to join him on Friday nights playing in a local restaurant. And so the piano lessons stopped and Dick suddenly experienced a revival of his clarinet playing.

 

 

Dick rediscovered the comfort of playing clarinet with a superb pianist like Bob. Over time the only thing that Dick questioned was, does this beautiful music have to be played in the context of the chatter of the eating patrons, clanging their dishes and their mouths, and generally not paying attention.

 

Now, Dick was simultaneously a member for the past ten years of the Cosmos Club, an exclusive club of academics in the nation’s capital. It had several dining rooms and two beautiful ballrooms. Thinking about this, Dick formulated the idea of moving his playing with Bob from the restaurant, to the club…..where the music would be the main event rather than an accountermant to eating. The concerts would be after dinner, not during dinner, seated in small jazz club-like tables, with sparkling wines and dessert.  

 

Bob, and Dick with the addition of Bassist, George Hyde, and Drummer, Dominic Smith performed the first concert in the Powell Room of the Cosmos Club. And the audience listened, sipped, and applauded. And there was an aura from the audience of admiration and respect for the musicians, a consequence of their being listened to.

 

Over the last several years Dick initiated collaborative consultation with Bob adding trumpeter, Chris Battistone, and several jazz guitarists, as well as four different singers.

 

Dick pays high tribute to Bob’s style of unique compositions for each tune instead of the more common vamping style of lessor musicians. He also sings high praises to Jazz trumpeter, Chris Battistone, for his gorgeous playing (formerly with Tex Beneke’s revived Glen Miller Orchestra) and remarkable wisdom and knowledge of jazz. And finally the marvelous rhythm section of Eric Harper, Bass, and Dominic Smith, Drums completes our beautiful sound.

 

As it turns out Dick did not only perform in his band—he also became a composer. When he engaged Chris, the trumpeter, to join the band, they met to discuss how they would play together in Dick’s home. As Chris was about to leave, Dick exclaimed to Chris, “look at my new Yamaha Piano!”. . …and he proceeded to play a number or two. He then said, “It even plays and orchestrates a nice Bossa Nova”….and went at that….playing what Dick thought was just a few nice licks ….but Chris said “what’s that?”….and Dick said “Oh nothing”….but Chris recorded it on his cell phone, charted it, and gave it to Bob Sykes, and they orchestrated it to be played in the next concert as a surprise to Dick. That was Dick’s first composition, which was followed in the next few years by more than ten tunes….eight of which were played by the band in Jeff Gruber’s Blue House Recording Studios Sound Stage on February 20, 2021, in Maryland….with Dick in Florida….during the pandemic this can be heard here. Dick composed all the tunes and wrote all of the lyrics.

 

During all this musical time Dick was exercising an artistic talent through his interest in photography. In the last 20 years, he had taken some 3,000 photos….on his iPhone. This was his one remaining expression of a life-long artistic talent previously expressed in painting large murals for his elementary school’s walls above the lockers when he was 11 years old.  This is also expressed in his attending of the Detroit Institute of Art Special Classes for Talented Students when he was a teenager, specializing in charcoal drawings and pencil sketching. A selection of some of his art can be found here.

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