Tim Armacost

Life and career

Tim Armacost spent his childhood in Tokyo and Washington, D.C. He started on clarinet at eight, then moved to tenor saxophone at sixteen, playing in D.C. big bands. At eighteen, he headed to Los Angeles, where he worked with Bobby Bradford and Charlie Shoemake. After earning a magna cum laude degree from Pomona College, he relocated to Amsterdam and spent seven years based in Europe, also teaching at the Amsterdam Conservatory. His recording career began in 1986, collaborating with musicians like Rob van den Broeck, Klaus Ignatzek, Rick Hollander, Walter Lang, and Hendrik Meurkens on the album Sambahia (Concord, 1990).

He then spent a year in New Delhi, India, studying tabla under Vijay Ateet and weaving Indian classical ideas into his compositions. He made two return trips to India, performing alongside American and Indian jazz artists at the Bombay International Jazz Festival, the Jazz Yatra Festival in New Delhi, and in Hyderabad, Bangalore, and Calcutta.

In 1993, Armacost settled in New York and released his debut album, Fire (Concord Jazz), with Kenny Barron, Gerald Cannon, Billy Hart, and Shingo Okudaira. A live follow-up, Live at Smalls, featured guest Tom Harrell. He also put out Ugetsu with Peter Tuscher, Adrian Mears, Bernhard Pichl, Martin Zenker, and Dejan Terzic, plus several other albums. During this period, he performed with Kenny Barron, Roy Hargrove, the David Murray Big Band, Maria Schneider Orchestra, Randy Brecker, Al Foster, Jimmy Cobb, Victor Lewis, Peter Erskine, Don Friedman, and Joris Teepe. In the 2010s, he played in the New York Standards Quartet and co-led the Brooklyn Big Band, writing and arranging for it. He recorded Future Swing (2015) with Mike Rodriguez and Yutaka Shiina, and in 2018 appeared on David Berkman’s Six of One. Between 1986 and 2019, he took part in 55 jazz recording sessions.

Armacost has composed for Wynton Marsalis and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra. He has taught at Jamey Aebersold’s Summer Jazz Workshops, the Stanford Summer Jazz Workshops, Queens College in New York City, and as a guest lecturer at universities in the United States, Japan, and Europe. He is also the author of The Jazz Saxophone Book, published by Sher Music, Inc.