$10 Cover @ the Door / Start 4:15pm / Doors 4pm / Seated Show
Rick McLaughlin’s work has been heard all over the world. Leader of the Rick McLaughlin Trio (Study of Light), side-man, and member of the Grammy-nominated jazz group Either/Orchestra, he has performed on stages and in recording studios in places ranging from greater Boston, MA to Los Angeles, CA; from Barcelona, Spain to Rome, Italy; and from Phuket, Thailand to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. As a bassist, arranger, and composer, his work is “electric and exciting,” (Cadence Magazine) and “…illuminates your aural universe with singleness and sincerity,”(Double Bassist Magazine).
A prominent educator, McLaughlin is Associate Professor of Harmony at Berklee College of Music, and was previously Assistant Chair of the Jazz Department at the New England Conservatory of Music’s School of Preparatory and Continuing Education. These positions capitalize on the work McLaughlin has done in addition to his bass playing, as a published author, composer, and arranger. His publications have been featured throughout the DrumPro series of magazines, where he has written on the relationship between the bass and drums in funk and jazz music. His paper, Which Way Do the Trade Winds Blow? Two Case Studies Examining the Voyage of Jazz to Africa was published by Berklee’s FUSION magazine in May 2017. Compositions of McLaughlin’s can be heard on his debut album as a bandleader, 2002’s Study of Light, for which his arrangement of the second movement of Ravel’s String Quartet is the first of its kind. The Either/Orchestra CD, Mood Music for Time Travellers, also features McLaughlin’s compositions, one of which, “History Lesson,” appeared on the Jazz/World Music Hot 100 Chart in the fall 2010.
McLaughlin has shared the stage with a wide range of musicians, from jazz luminaries such as Don Byron, Steve Lacy, John Medeski, Danilo Perez, and John Zorn, to rock musicians Willie “Loco” Alexander, Morphine and Peter Wolf, and country music star Roger Miller. A frequent collaborator with musicians from all over the globe, McLaughlin has also performed with Ethiopia’s great singers Mahmoud Ahmed and Alemayhu Eshete, as well as the innovator behind Ethio-Jazz, Mulatu Astatke.
McLaughlin graduated from the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, MA with both B.M. and M.M. degrees, the latter he received with Academic Honors and Distinction in Performance.
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