RODGER COLEMAN & SAM BYRD
Genres: Jazz Related Improv, Composition • United States

Rodger Coleman began piano lessons at the age of seven, eventually studying for eight years with Dr. Allen Brings, composer and professor of music at Queens College of the City University of New York. In school, he studied clarinet and other woodwinds under the direction of Gary Sousa and sang in the choir. At the New England Conservatory of Music, Rodger studied “Third Stream” music with Ran Blake, Hankus Netsky and Bob Moses. After falling in love with punk rock, Rodger picked up the electric guitar, taking lessons with Mick Goodrick and experimenting with fellow students in a punk/jazz hybrid that would eventually become UYA (a/k/a Upstanding Young Americans). With the arrival of drummer, Sam Byrd, they became a real band, playing late-night gigs in Boston nightclubs. Sam, then a librarian at MIT, taught himself to play drums in 1969 and was a member of several ensembles in and around Richmond, read more...