Larry McKenna

Larry McKenna is an ideal exemplory case of a jazz musician who isn’t popular nationally but is known as a professional of his device in his city. Nearly all jazz fans in NY or Boston may possibly not be acquainted with him, but talk about McKenna’s name to numerous jazzmen in Philadelphia, and they’re going to let you know that, along with Bootsie Barnes and Jimmy Oliver, he’s among the city’s greatest tenor sax players. After signing up for a high college jazz music group at 14 and playing little gigs around Philly as a adult, McKenna got his initial significant break when, in 1959, he spent half a year on the highway as an associate of Woody Herman’s Big Music group. McKenna was with George Youthful in 1962 and Al Raymond in 1970, and it had been in the first 1970s that he began teaching at Temple School, West Chester School and Philadelphia Community University. Over time, the saxman documented with Herman, Pal DeFranco and Dr. Bruce Klauber being a sideman and performed countless regional gigs like a innovator, but he didn’t record a Compact disc of his personal until 1997, when he offered My Glowing Hour: Larry McKenna Takes on Harold Arlen for the small, Pittsburgh-based Alanna Information. The past due 1990s discovered McKenna continuing to instruct in the above-mentioned schools while experimenting Philly regularly.