Jazz Legend Warren Vache Donates Personal Library to the Jazz Loft
Just when you think you can predict how cornetist Warren Vaché might finish off a phrase or interpret a given song, he turns quite another way or the tune receives a totally new treatment. In Vaché, jazz has found a creator whose prodigious, hard-earned skills enable him to craft swinging performances of beauty, emotion and surprise.
Sometimes narrowly classified as a swing musician, the cornetist regularly defies this or other labels. Vaché has listened to and absorbed all styles of music. His trumpet heroes include Louis Armstrong, Roy Eldridge, Bobby Hackett, Fats Navarro, Tom Harrell and Ruby Braff among others. Warren has spent years playing with such greats as Rosemary Clooney, Benny Goodman, Hank Jones, Gerry Mulligan, Woody Herman, Bobby Short, Benny Carter and countless others who were blessed to share their stage with his masterful artistry which served to do nothing short of elevating their art to greater heights.
Shunning imitation, he is able to evoke some of the best from these and other models, creating an individual cornet voice, one that stresses purity of tone. In the liner notes for Vaché’s Easy Going album, Peter Straub wrote, “Here Warren has located himself firmly in that most immediately satisfying of jazz territories, where (in trumpet terms) Bunny Berigan shakes hands with Clifford Brown”.
Mr. Vache recently donated his book library to the Jazz Loft. 140 books, mostly autographed, span the lifetime and career of both he and his father Warren Vache Sr. Along with this outstanding donation Vache also included an assortment of period photographs including the likes of Pee Wee Erwin, Bobby Hacket and others as well as an important artifact from a 6/27/75 New York Jazz Repertory Company television special which can be seen on youtube.
Mr. Vache appeared with his trio in Stony Brook this past winter as part of the Jazz Loft’s Harbor Jazz Series. His recent donation is on the heels of a significant past contribution of his fathers 78 record collection. Roughly 500 recordings including original test pressings from Decca records courtesy of his mother Madeline who was a secretary at Decca records during the 1940s and 1950s are a highlight of the Jazz Loft recording archives.
On a recent trip to Rahway, NJ Mr. Vache recalled how his father would skip lunch at school and save his 5 cents each day. At the end of the week he would walk the five miles to the neighboring town that had a record shop and buy a record for his quarter!
The Jazz Loft is honored to house the Vache Family Archives and especially happy to have established such a wonderful relationship with a true legend in the world of jazz. We look forward to Mr. Vache’s debut performance at the Loft upon our opening!
Thanks Warren, you’re the best!
