Ibeam, on 7th Street in Gowanus, Brooklyn, is a single room with your basic acoustic music gear: a grand piano, drumset, amps, PA, music stands. Ibeam members use it to teach, practice, rehearse; if you set up the chairs and have a door person, you can play a show; if you bring the gear, you can record.
It’s a vital part of the music community in Brooklyn, and a home base. I love this place.
Tonight, Wednesday July 3rd, at 8 PM and 9:30, I’ll be at Ibeam with pianist Jacob Sacks and bassist Shawn Lovato to play the music of bassist Robert Emmett Bowen III.
I met Bob in the summer of 1997 at the Manhattan School of Music, where he taught my improv ensemble. In ‘99 and the early 2000s, when I was going to William Paterson, I went to a bunch of Bob gigs at long-gone East Village venues Detour and the Internet Cafe.
At Detour, there was the trio of Bob, drummer/bandleader Matt Wilson, and saxophonist-composer Ohad Talmor— the M.O.B Trio. Matt Wilson, who I hope to write about someday, and Bob Bowen had a lot in common— both were Midwesterners and family men, both rugged individualists. They were a natural team, and I can hear and see them together very clearly right now. Talmor, a capital-C Composer and improviser of gorgeous melodies straight from the Lee Konitz school, was a perfect counterweight to Bob and Matt’s gently disruptive texture.
At the Internet Cafe, 12 blocks south of Detour, Bob was often found with drummer Dan Weiss and pianist Jacob Sacks, then at the very beginning of their careers. Calling themselves bowensacksweiss, the virtuosity and fearlessness of 23 year-old Weiss and and Sacks, undergirded by Bob Bowen, then in his mid-thirties, was a sight and sound to behold.
Dan is a big influence in the music community today. On Utica Box, Weiss’s 2019 release on Sunnyside, such a great album, I hear echoes of Bob in the chemistry and understanding between the long-time trio of Dan, Jacob, and bassist Thomas Morgan.
I couldn’t find any video of M.O.B. Trio or bowensacksweiss, but this YouTube clip of a Konitz-composed, Talmor-arranged song for the Konitz Nonet, “Moon”, featuring both Matt Wilson and Ohad, is a wonderful snapshot of Bob. Yes, that’s Bob back there.
Bowen was killed in a bicycle accident in August 2010, at age 45. There was an unforgettable memorial concert that fall, but there’s still a gaping hole where he used to be. In addition to leaving behind his son Bobby and daughter Stella, there was his legion of devoted students, a just-begun band he called Leeway, and dozens of unrecorded, barely-played compositions.
The tunes we’re playing tonight are a cross-section of Bob’s interests: some are lovely tunes with great melodies and nice changes, others are more conceptual or ambitious. Each one is a challenge, each one is imbued with his spirit, and I notice that I’m sitting in Dan Weiss’s and Matt Wilson’s chair.
There are geniuses amongst us, legendary artists sitting next to us on the bus, waiting on us at restaurants, holding the door at the post office. I wrote this essay about some beautiful things I saw, and dreamt about what I might have missed. Would I have noticed the miracle of Chick Webb in 1935, or the poetry of Miles Davis and Tony Williams playing “Yesterdays” in 1965?
Let’s celebrate what’s happening now. It might be the greatest thing ever, and we can’t say for sure that it’ll be here tomorrow. Let’s play Bob Bowen’s music at Ibeam tonight.
This is beautiful, Vinnie. And last night was amazing. Thank you. Just a minor correction: Bob (1965-2010) was 45, not 42 when he died. Still tragically young. 💔
This is a beautifully written elegy, not mournful. Enjoy celebrating Bob's music and musical presence!