Greg Hopkins Swings Around the Globe
AUGUST 15, 1997 THE BOSTON GLOBE
Its summertime, and Greg Hopkins might be found anywhere on the globe. He brings his big band to the Regattabar on Tuesday, though that’s a mere local stopover for the transcontinental composer-arranger-educator.
As usual, Hopkins was in Perugia, Italy, in July, where he and fellow Berklee professors taught at the UmbriaJazz school and played at a club called Sullivan’s. (Leave it to Bostonians to land a gig at the city’s only Irish pub.) More recently, Hopkins was in Fairbanks, Alaska, for the 18th straight summer, directing the jazz program of 60-100 players at the town’s arts festival. “It’s a great getaway,” he said via an erratic phone connection, and the big Army base up here guarantees us a lot of very good semi-professionals.”
The non-students among us are more familiar with Hopkins the big band leader. “The nucleus has been together for over 20 years,” he said. “Wayne Naus and I started the band, with me as music director; then Wayne left and I took over about 12 years ago. We had a disagreement about playing Buddy Rich charts. I had been on the road with Buddy and didn’t want to do them without him.”
The Rich gig was only a part of Hopkins’s preparation. “I’ve always loved ensemble music and played in everything from big bands to rhythm and blues groups. In Detroit during the ‘60s, I was one of the younger players at Motown, so I got the dog work, going out on the bus for the tours while the veterans stayed in the studio. It was a great experience for horn players, with 10 or 15 of us blowing over that strong rhythmic groove, and I got to write section parts as well as doing a lot of writing for other bands in the Detroit area.”
After six years on the road, including his time with Rich, Hopkins opted for a rest. “I got off in Boston, purportedly for a year or two to save some money,” he recalled. “Then I started working at Berklee and in the theaters, and it was too good to leave.” The big band gave him an outlet for his writing and for his preferred approach of “stretching out, but still respecting my roots.”
For Hopkins, the band’s character is defined by its rhythm section. Guitarist “Mick Goodrick, [drummer] Joe Hunt and [bassist] Bruce Gertz, or John Lockwood, who will sub for Gertz at the Regattabar, are a totally jazz rhythm section, which is not what you typically get in big bands. They play with such empathy. I like space, which is an integral part of any art form, so we often don’t use piano, although Chris Neville will be with us Tuesday.
“I write with the rhythm section in mind, and for the great soloists like Bill Pierce, Paul Fontaine, Jeff Gallindo, Tony Lada, Jeff Stout, Greg Badolato. I rarely feature myself. It’s enough fun for me to direct traffic.”
Between Fairbanks and the Regattabar, Hopkins is spending a week in Arizona, celebrating his mother’s birthday. After Tuesday’s sets, he is off to the Czech Republic. “I’m taking some of my charts, and I’ll direct the Prague Radio Big Band. You never know where this music will take you.”
