"Samuel Carthorne Rivers (September 25, 1923 Ð December 26, 2011) was an American jazz musician and composer. He performed on soprano and tenor saxophones, bass clarinet, flute, harmonica and piano.

Active in jazz since the early 1950s, he earned wider attention during the mid-1960s spread of free jazz. With a thorough command of music theory, orchestration and composition, Rivers was an influential and prominent artist in jazz music.

Rivers was born in El Reno, Oklahoma. His father was a gospel musician who had sung with the Fisk Jubilee Singers and the Silverstone Quartet, exposing Rivers to music from an early age. His grandfather was Marshall W. Taylor, a religious leader from Kentucky. Rivers was stationed in California in the 1940s during a stint in the Navy. Here he performed semi-regularly with blues singer Jimmy Witherspoon. Rivers moved to Boston, Massachusetts in 1947, where he studied at the Boston Conservatory with Alan Hovhaness.

He performed with Quincy Jones, Herb Pomeroy, Tadd Dameron and others.

In 1959 Rivers began performing with 13-year-old drummer Tony Williams. Rivers was briefly a member of the Miles Davis Quintet in 1964, partly on Williams's recommendation. This edition of the quintet released a single live album, Miles in Tokyo, from a show recorded on July 14 at Kohseinenkin Hall. Rivers' tenure with the quintet was brief: he had engagements in Boston, and his playing style was too avant-garde for Davis during this period; he was replaced by Wayne Shorter shortly thereafter.

Rivers was signed by Blue Note Records, for whom he recorded four albums as leader and made several sideman appearances. Among noted sidemen on his own Blue Note albums were Jaki Byard, who appears on Fuchsia Swing Song, Herbie Hancock and Freddie Hubbard. He appeared on Blue Note recordings by Tony Williams, Andrew Hill and Larry Young.

Rivers derived his music from bebop, but he was an adventurous player, adept at free jazz. The first of his Blue Note albums, Fuchsia Swing Song (1964), adopts an approach sometimes called "inside-outside". Here the performer frequently obliterates the explicit harmonic framework ("going outside") but retains a hidden link so as to be able to return to it in a seamless fashion. Rivers brought the conceptual tools of bebop harmony to a new level in this process, united at all times with the ability to "tell a story", which Lester Young had laid down as a benchmark for the jazz improviser.

His powers as a composer were also in evidence in this period: the ballad "Beatrice" from Fuchsia Swing Song has become an important standard, particularly for tenor saxophonists. For instance, it is the first cut on Joe Henderson's 1985 The State of the Tenor, Vols. 1 & 2, and Stan Getz recorded it during the 1989 sessions eventually issued as Bossas & Ballads Ð The Lost Sessions.

During the 1970s, Rivers and his wife, Bea, ran a jazz loft called "Studio Rivbea" in New York City's NoHo district. It was located on Bond Street in Lower Manhattan and was originally opened as a public performance space as part of the first New York Musicians Festival in 1970. Critic John Litweiler has written that "In New York Loft Jazz meant Free Jazz in the Seventies" and Studio Rivbea was "the most famous of the lofts". The loft was important in the development of jazz because it was an example of artists creating their own performance spaces and taking responsibility for presenting music to the public. This allowed for music to be free of extra-musical concerns that would be present in a nightclub or concert hall situation. A series of recordings made at the loft were issued under the title Wildflowers on the Douglas label.

Rivers was also recruited by Clifford Thornton to lead a student world-music/free-jazz ensemble at Wesleyan University in 1971.

During this era Rivers continued to record, including several albums for Impulse!: Streams, recorded live at Montreux, Hues (both records contain different trio performances later collated on CD as Trio Live), the quartet album Sizzle and his first big-band disc, Crystals; perhaps his best-known work from this period though is his appearance on Dave Holland's Conference of the Birds, in the company of Anthony Braxton and Barry Altschul.

In the early 1990s Sam and wife Beatrice moved to Florida, in part to expand his orchestra compositions with a reading band in Orlando. This band became the longest-running incarnation of the RivBea Orchestra. He performed regularly with his Orchestra and Trio with bassist Doug Mathews and drummer Anthony Cole (later replaced by Rion Smith.) From 1996 to 1998 he toured and recorded three projects for Nato Records in France with pianist Tony Hymas and others. In 1998, with the assistance of Steve Coleman, he recorded two Grammy-nominated big-band albums for RCA Victor with the RivBea All-Star Orchestra, Culmination and Inspiration (the title-track is an elaborate reworking of Dizzy Gillespie's "Tanga": Rivers was in Gillespie's band near the end of the trumpeter's life). Other late albums of note include Portrait, a solo recording for FMP, and Vista, a trio with drummers Adam Rudolph and Harris Eisenstadt for Meta. During the late 1990s he appeared on several albums on Postcards Records.

In 2006, he released Aurora, a third CD featuring compositions for his Rivbea Orchestra and the first CD featuring members of his working orchestra in Orlando.

Rivers died from pneumonia on December 26, 2011 at the age of 88 in Orlando, Florida.

On June 25, 2019, The New York Times Magazine listed Sam Rivers among hundreds of artists whose material was reportedly destroyed in the 2008 Universal fire."

"Bryan Carrott is an internationally renowned vibraphonist/mallet percussionist, who performs, records, and tours extensively in the jazz idiom. A prolific composer and improviser as well, Mr. Carrott is also an accomplished pianist. Bryan began percussion studies at New York's High School of Music and Art and continued at the Manhattan School of Music. He then went on to study at Brooklyn College under New York Philharmonic percussionist Morris Lang and William Paterson College, where he studied with Dave Samuels. Bryan completed degrees in Jazz Studies and Jazz Performance.

A two-time recipient of New York's "Meet the Composer Foundation", Bryan has been cited by Down Beat Magazine's International Critics' Poll seven of the last nine years for "Talent Deserving Wider Recognition" in the vibes category. Mr. Carrott was featured in the concert film "The Lounge Lizards Live in Berlin," as well as several television programs including "BET's JAZZ CENTRAL". Bryan can also be seen performing on marimba with Don Byron and Harvey Kietel in the film, "Lulu on the Bridge". He spent two years as a featured mallet percussionist for Disney's Broadway production of "The Lion King" and most recently performed with Branford Marsalis and his Quartet on the original soundtrack music composed by Marsalis for the Spike Lee produced film, "3 A.M.".

As a sideman Bryan has played with many top jazz groups including James Spaulding, Benny Powell, The Lounge Lizards, Kimati Dinizulu, and Roy Campbell. In recent years, he has been recording and performing with David "Fathead" Newman, Muhal Richard Abrahms, Butch Morris, The Jazz Passengers, Bob Moses, The Spirit of Life Ensemble, Henry Threadgill, Dave Douglas, Yoron Israel Connection, and Charlie Hunter. These performances include dates in the U.S., Europe, and Japan. In the Summer of 2006, Carrott is stated to perform with the world renown Ju Percussion Group in Teipei. Carrott has also collaborated with pianist/composer Riccardo Fassi for successful tours and festival performances in Italy. An original member of The Ralph Peterson Fo'tet, Bryan has composed, performed, and recorded with the group for the last ten years.

As a composer, Bryan has performed and presented his original music throughout the U.S., Europe and on recordings with the Fo'tet and vocalist Ruth Naomi Floyd, all to critical acclaim. He also performs and tours with his own groups the Bryan Carrott Trio, Quartet, and Quintet. Bryan performs and records exclusively with the Ross R715G vibraphone and R420W marimba."

"Ben Street is an American jazz double bassist. Street has performed and recorded with many renowned artists, including John Scofield, Kurt Rosenwinkel, Mark Turner, Ben Monder, Michael Eckroth, Sam Rivers, Billy Hart, Danilo Perez, Aaron Parks, and Adam Cruz, among others.

He studied the acoustic bass with former Weather Report bassist Miroslav Vitous.

He is the son of saxophonist and saxophone mouthpiece maker Bill Street and is a native of Maine."

"Kresten Osgood is one of these people who at the same time defy and totally own categories. An extraordinary drummer and improviser who with the fullest respect to tradition, challenges it at any given moment of his creative endeavors. He has about a 100 albums to his credit, toured practically everywhere, has been performing and/or recording with legends like Roscoe Mitchell, Paul Bley, Lee Scratch Perry, William Parker, Masabumi Kikuchi, Derek Bailey, Wadada Leo Smith, Jason Moran, Michael Blake, Oliver Lake, Kurt Rosenwinkel, John Tchicai, Tim Berne, Justin Vernon, Peter Brötzman, Joshua Redman, Eugene Chadbourne, Billy Preston, Alan Silva, Brad Mehldau, Mats Gustafsson, Bennie Maupin, The National, Dr. Lonnie Smith, Sam Rivers, Henry Grimes, Dr. Yusef Lateef, Warren Smith, and many many others.

But even that doesn't really cover the full spectrum of what he has been up to in his career. A successful rapper, composer, pianist, vocalist, saxophonist and trumpeter, a true multi-instrumentalist, a powerful organizer being an extremely important driving force in lifting and pushing the music life in Copenhagen forward, entertainer with his own shows in TV and radio, receiver of numerous awards and honors, A very sharp kaleidoscope man, regardless of the context always realizing his fullest potential.

Kresten has been involved in a 17 part series about the history of danish jazz. a podcast released by the Danish National radio."