Sam Rivers: Founding Studio Rivbea
by
Ed Hazell

Founding Studio Rivbea

The apartment on 130th Street was the first location they named Studio Rivbea. “We needed a communications office, so I named my own house [Studio Rivbea] and it became an office-slash-personal classroom,” Rivers said in a WKCR interview. The office was presumably needed for the Harlem Ensemble, the orchestra he was beginning to assemble; the address appears on stationary for the band. “At that time I was already tutoring a couple of young musicians on the side. The reason it’s called ‘Rivbea’ is because I took the ‘Rivers’ from Sam Rivers and put it together with ‘Bea’ from Bea Rivers, my wife’s name.” It was a name that not only reflected Sam’s ambitions as an educator and artist, but also his deep love for Bea and their partnership in life.

Reuniting the Family

Sam’s elderly mother was in failing health and less able to look after young children, so the timing was fortunate. Monique, the older of the two Rivers sisters who went to Arkansas, remembers the time with her grandmother as idyllic. However, she says, “There were some problems with my grandmother’s mental state and it got bad.”

The kids probably arrived in New York sometime in 1967 after Sam and Bea moved to the 130th St. apartment. When the then five-year-old Monique met her parents in New York, she didn’t recognize them. “I thought my grandmother was my mother,” she remembers. She recalls Sam later telling her “we looked like little hillbillies. We had our Sunday best on, our shiny patent leathers­­ – those were our Sunday shoes – and long dresses.”

Sam was devoting more time to his music and Bea worked as a telephone operator to support the family. Sometimes, Monique remembers, her mother would take her and Traci to work and they would sit on the floor near her and color and play. Depending on her shift, Bea couldn’t always be home to cook meals or get the children off to school. Fortunately, older sisters Robin and Cindy had moved to New York as well and were available to look after the youngsters when needed. “In Harlem, I was assigned to my sister Robin,” Monique remembers. “She was supposed to make sure I got off to school and got back for dinner. And then my other sister, Cindy, was assigned to my younger sister. Robin, she was like a mother to me.”

In Search of Rehearsal Space

Rivers said he found just the place he was looking for, but as he later told W.A. Brower in the Downbeat article, “Sam Rivers: Warlord of the Lofts,” “when I went down to speak to the people in housing they said, ‘Well, we are getting ready to build a Harlem Arts Theatre and it’s going to be a complex.’” If plans were being drawn up for such an arts complex in 1966 or 1967, it took a long time to realize them. Most of Harlem’s cultural centers, such as the Dance Theatre of Harlem, or the Harlem School for the Arts, didn’t begin ambitious construction programs until well into the 1970s. Whatever was the cause, Rivers had to scotch his plan for his own music school and cultural center.

Instead, he and the family moved to a smaller, although still roomy, location at 57 West 124 St. He rented two six-room apartments on the top floor of the building, which provided enough space for him to give lessons and conduct occasional daytime small-group rehearsals. “I had the whole top floor, 12 rooms, so I could do a lot of things up there,” Rivers told Ted Panken in a 1997 WKCR interview.

Although they founded Rivbea while living at 13oth Street, both Sam and Bea considered the West 124th Street address as the first real home of Studio Rivbea. It was also the first step toward realizing a joint commitment between them to integrate where they lived and raised a family, where Sam would compose and perform his art and work as an educator, and where ultimately they would both contribute to serving a larger musical community. Most of us separate our lives into home and work, which take place in different locations and rarely intersect. What Studio Rivbea aspired to was something different – an integration of all aspects of their lives under one roof, dissolving the barriers that normally partition our lives. It was not unprecedented; Don and Moki Cherry were doing similar things at their home in Sweden at around the same time. The confluence of family and musical life was one aspect of Rivbea on Bond St. that charmed many visitors.

While the rooms at 57 West 124 St. served well as living accommodations and teaching studios, they didn’t provide the space that Rivers needed for the orchestra he was determined to establish. After-work rehearsal hours were a practical necessity since the majority of bandmembers had day jobs, but nighttime rehearsals at the apartment were out of the question because they would disturb neighbors. So, Rivers had to look elsewhere.

Rehearsing at P.S. 092

Once a week, Rivers would get to the school early, set up the chairs on the auditorium stage and put the scores out on music stands. He always brought more music than they could possibly cover in the time they had. “So every minute was full. Finish this and boom, let’s go to this,” tuba player Joe Daley, an early member of the band, recalled. “And then, ‘oh, we have to stop now.’”

Rehearsals at P.S. 092 were unpaid, of course, but players were committed to the band and many showed up regularly. Sometimes the stage was crowded, sometimes it was not. If more trombonists showed up than there were parts for, they doubled up. If no trumpets showed one week, the rehearsal went on without them. It was the challenge and fascination of Rivers’ charts that kept them coming back week after week.

Joe Daley describes the challenges in Rivers’ compositions that musicians found so satisfying to master:

Sam’s music was very, very challenging to read. ... Some composers, they like to be changing the time signature every bar, so everything lines up with the bar lines. But Sam would use that same kind of concept without changing the time signatures. The bar lines were just there so everyone knew where “one” was in a certain place, but they had nothing to do with the phrasing of the lines. ... Sam wanted to keep everything in 4/4.  I think of all the many big band compositions I played of his, I never saw anything be out of 4/4. As far as notation, there was always a 4/4 feel in it. ... Sam didn’t need to change the time signature every time the rhythm changed because the rhythms in each section could be different. Sometimes you’d have three or four guys conducting. One conducting the brass and everybody’s in different time signatures and different entrances. And there was no key signature because everything was atonal – no key signatures and everything in 4/4.

The pieces went everywhere. Sometimes phrases would repeat after seven beats or after 11, so you couldn’t just count it off and count on eight-bar phrases, 16-bar phrases. Instruments would come in and out, some would be in 9, some would be in 11, some would be in 4, some would be in 5. It was just very, very organic. You really needed to know how to read. ...

All the voices would have to follow some type of format. That’s one thing about Sam’s music, it was always formatted in a certain way. Some guys are totally free of everything; it’s just open, open, open, open. But Sam was much different than that. In everything, there was a format, there was a focus, a direction.

Sam was able to compose all of that within the 4/4 time signature and conduct at the same time while playing the saxophone, playing most of the most difficult parts on the saxophone, and improvising. Looking back at it, it’s kind of amazing.

The rehearsal arrangement was less than perfect. For one thing, the hours were limited. In interviews, Rivers gave various times for the hours that were available: 4–7 p.m., 6–10 p.m., or simply “before 9 p.m.” Whatever the actual hours were, it’s clear they were confined to early evening and not long enough.

The time limitations irritated River. “By the time everybody got ready to play, it was time to leave,” Rivers told Charles J. Gans of JazzForum magazine. “We really couldn’t relax there.”

For another thing, “at the school there was no beer, no drinks, no cigarettes, no nothing,” he explained to Ted Panken in a 1997 WKCR interview, “so it was a very tight situation for us to rehearse in.”

These were not petty concerns. Rivers understood what made musicians tick, what conditions brought out their best. A relaxed, unhurried environment where people felt they had time to really get into the music was essential. The “hang” was an integral part of the music-making process, too. Personal interactions, shop talk, joking around, getting high together, all contributed to the creation of good music by building the feelings of camaraderie and teamwork necessary for the musicians to function at their highest level. Rivers was by nature a leader and he felt it was part of his responsibility to create the best environment for creativity and musicianship to thrive. The need to rehearse whenever he needed to for as long as he liked was a major driving force in his move from Harlem to downtown.

The Harlem Ensemble

He started with around 15 members – many of them, like him, lived in Harlem – but he expanded the size of the group as his compositions demanded. A flyer for an early performance at the school on June 15, 1968, mentions a 12-piece band. A 1971 concert at Wesleyan University featured a 25-piece ensemble and Rivers claimed at one point to have 30 or 35 regular members.

Among the early members were musicians who would remain affiliated with the big band after Rivers moved downtown. These included reed players such as Carlos Ward, Monty Waters, Roland Alexander, Paul Jeffrey, and Hamiet Bluiett; trumpeters Ted Daniel, Olu Dara, and Joe Gardner; trombonists Charles Stephens, Grachan Moncur III, and Kiane Zawadi; tuba players Bob Stewart and Joe Daley; and drummers Warren Smith, Wilson Moorman, and Juma Sultan. Many of them would lead or be members of other bands that would perform at 24 Bond St.

The 1970s, although not widely acknowledged as such, were a fertile period for jazz large ensembles. Many of the players in the Harlem Ensemble also performed with big bands such as Frank Foster’s Loud Minority, Ted Daniel’s Energy Big Band, the Sun Ra Arkestra, Warren Smith’s Jazz Composer’s Workshop Ensemble, and the Thad Jones-Mel Lewis Orchestra.

The band played several concerts at the Mary McLeod Bethune Elementary School, per their agreement, and made several appearances at The East, the Black-owned cultural center in Brooklyn. There were outdoor concerts at Mt. Morris Park (renamed Marcus Garvey Park in 1973) and the Delecourt Theatre in Central Park, and one gig at the Rockland Palace Dance Hall. They played their first documented gig at Studio Rivbea on Bond St. in July 1973, although rehearsals there began well before that.

An Early Statement of Purpose

Introducing the ensemble in the first paragraph, Rivers sets out as neat a summary of his art as he ever made:

Organized in 1967 under the direction of Samuel C. (Sam) Rivers, fifteen talented Musicians were brought together with the purpose of creating and performing music which would represent the culmination of our musical experiences to the present and expose new paths for the future, expressing ourselves as fluently as humanly possible, concerning ourselves with originality in conception and sound, retaining the roots of our Black Music Heritage, conceived in the Traditional and evolving into fresh directions, to compose and perform extended compositions, taking into consideration all facets of Black Music which is a direct extension of the Black Experience.

Here in this short paragraph, Rivers voices both his commitment to exploring “new paths for the future” as well as his respect for tradition. He singles out two key components common to both – instrumental facility (“expressing ourselves as fluently as humanly possible”) and “originality in conception and sound.” He carefully avoids using the term “jazz” to label his music, but instead anchors it in “Black Music Heritage” and “all facets of Black Music.” He names some of these facets of Black Music later, including gospel, blues, soul, and rock. While he draws a distinction between “Modern Popular Music” and “Contemporary Modern Music,” he is also asserts that they are connected in important ways because both are rooted in the Black Experience. Rivers is proposing a new music that springs from the African American heritage, and that, importantly, deserves to be treated as art, as American art.

Rivers generally avoided using the term “jazz” for the music he personally made during the 1970s, and for the music of others whom he presented at Studio Rivbea. The mission statement for Rivbea that often appeared on the studio’s flyers doesn’t use the term at all and instead refer to “American music.” The festivals he organized one or more times a year were festivals of “new music” or simply “music.” Rivers consistently pushed to have music rooted in African American culture acknowledged as American music, part of a larger cultural fabric to which Black artists legitimately contributed. We see some of the first articulations of this idea in the Harlem Ensemble publicity sheet.

He goes on to admit that the music is “AVANT GARDE,” a term he would eventually renounce, reasoning that music that was 20 or 25 years old really couldn’t be avant-garde. But while he’s happy to accept the label at the time he wrote the Harlem Ensemble sheet, he also writes, “We hasten to add that it is not so called ‘Free Music.’”

Here, Rivers plays on a common stereotype of free jazz – that it’s destructive, not respected by musicians who really know what they are doing, and irrelevant to the community because it rejects its heritage.

Modern music with its destruction of the preceding forms tends to be unpalatable even to many musicians, consider the task, to bring a form of music to the Community that is not accepted by many members of the profession.

He’s setting up a straw man that he can knock down. Perhaps it’s a divisive and unfair tactic, but his caricature of free jazz in this document allows him contrast the Harlem Ensemble with this highly suspect “free music.” Rivers positions the Harlem Ensemble as a constructive, community-based group with artistic integrity that is acknowledged by casual listeners and experts alike. His alternative avant-garde is not revolutionary and destructive, but evolutionary and constructive. It emerges organically out of its community, building on Black Pride, respect for heritage, and genuine rootedness.

In opposition to a form of music that is not accepted by the community and other musicians, Rivers offers his group of well-schooled but progressive-minded professionals, teachers, and artists who are anchored in their community and seek to uplift it.

All members are teachers of Music and have number of private students, most are talented composers and lead their own groups, some hold Associate Professor positions at Universities, others are “Artist in Residence” at Universities, some are members of the New York City Public School System, others teach in Community Music Programs and all of us are involved in upgrading the musical awareness of our communities, by helping them to know and understand the Music of their Artist’s, which is a major part of our Cultural Heritage.

The musicians’ credentials bolstered his case to the wider, white musical establishment, that Black music was performed by highly trained, legitimate musicians who deserved respect and inclusion in the American music world. Their connections to the Black community reinforced the efforts to educate and raise the consciousness of Black audiences, another essential component of legitimizing the music.

Before he arrived at Bond St. and started presenting concerts there, Rivers was able to articulate an artistic vision of avant-garde music that had high artistic and technical standards, a sense of heritage and community, and a determination to show the world that Black music was an inseparable part of American culture. In this sense it differed from the agenda of the Black Arts Movement and BART/S which placed revolutionary politics at the center of all the arts and had a direct intent to foment social change. Rivers focused on music and the racial politics of the larger music world, but largely left wider racial and social issues to the side.

Cecil Taylor Unit

These avant-garde gigs often drew Rivers downtown. Somewhere on the Lower East Side – Rivers said it was near Studio We, which was located at 94 Eldridge Street – in late 1968, Rivers encountered Cecil Taylor on the street. “I just told him, You know, man, I enjoy your music and I admire your playing and I’d like to come and jam with you,” Rivers told Marc Minsker of the accidental meeting in an interview for the South Carolina Free Times in February 2002. “And he said, ‘OK.’”

It was to be a crucial formative musical experience for Rivers. After his tenure with Taylor, his mature style emerged. As we’ve seen, the foundations of Rivers’ mature sound were already firmly laid. Between 1964 and 1969 one can hear the increasing incorporation of an extended range of sounds, textures, and tone colors into the sinuous contours of Rivers’ bebop-inflected phrases. But with Taylor, Rivers was able to fully realize his grand synthesis of his bebop and blues roots with the techniques of the jazz avant-garde. In all likelihood, the long form, continuous improvisations that were characteristic of Rivers’ small group performances throughout the ‘70s and into the ‘80s have their roots in the marathon performances and rehearsals of the Taylor Unit. The long performances unlocked something that Rivers felt was important for his own music, that he could use for his own creative and expressive ends. Taylor was a catalyst that helped clarify ideas Rivers was already considering. As he told Bill Shoemaker in a Washington Post interview in July 1978, “Being with [Taylor’s] group sent me to another plateau.”

Shortly after their chance meeting, Taylor invited Rivers to join the rehearsals of his trio with Jimmy Lyons and Andrew Cyrille in preparation for a concert at the University of Wisconsin in Seattle in January 1969.

“Cecil is a very intense rehearser,” Rivers remembered. The constant rehearsing was something new for Rivers, but it “got me to a place where I was subconscious when I got to my fifteenth solo chorus: you know with Cecil one solo can last forty-five minutes to an hour,” Rivers told Shoemaker. The intense physical demands of playing for so long at such a high energy level sent Rivers into what he often described as “trance states.” It was “almost an out of body experience,” he said. With Taylor he found that playing for hours without stopping forced him to be more creative. “The longer you play, you have to keep creating new ideas. I've been playing for over two hours, it's a matter of we've gone past your cliches. So you end up in a different zone. You used up all your licks and everything, so you have to really create something.”

Rivers was a member of the unit from January 1969­ through May 1971. Most of his work came in the first year, when Taylor’s quartet was in residence at the Fondation Maeght in St. Paul de Vence in southern France for five weeks that summer. In the fall the group toured Europe from October 26 to November 10. After that, gigs with Taylor occurred far less frequently until Taylor scaled back to a trio in the spring of 1971.

© 2025 Ed Hazell

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