Rick Holland Productions

Rick Holland Evan Dobbins Little Big Band (Jazz, contemporary)

This new Ten piece ensemble plays exciting contemporary-mainstream jazz, featuring some of the best writers from around the country!

From LLB's release "In Time's Shadow"

Formed by Rick Holland, (trumpet) and Evan Dobbins, (Trombone), the bands mission is to compile new arrangements for this 10 piece setting and perform with high profile national artists.

The band currently has 5 nationally recognized arrangers and composers contributing to the bands mission.. They are Brent Wallarab (Smithsonian MasterWorks), Kerry Strayer, (Kansas City, Mo.), Jim Martin,(Chicago, Ill.), Mike Pendowski (Rochester, NY) and Bill Dobbins, (Eastman School of Music)

This year, the band will feature new arrangements by Bill Dobbins, Mike Pendowski, Bent Wallarab, John Ferrara, (Berklee College Faculty) and Mark Buselli, (Ball State University) - see http://www.bwjo.org. Some of these were already premiered on Jazz 90.1’s live concert broadcast.

In the LBB’s not so far in the distance goals, include a new recording in collaboration with Bill Dobbins, Kerry Strayer and Mark Buselli.. This new disc will feature Rick, Evan and the Little Big Band playing the arrangements of Bill Dobbins, Brent Wallarab, Mark Buselli and John Ferrara.

"Live at WXXI's OnStage"

Some quotes about the LBB and Rick Holland:

There's nothing little about these guys--big sound and big talent. What a great show at Hi Fidelity with a special guest singer Nancy Donnelly. Dean Keller killed on bari--his solo on Nightlights was so beautiful that I had tears, and Evan Dobbins is a monster trombone player. I can't wait to hear these guys again. - Tracy Kroft “Rochester, Scene And Heard

"The Rick Holland/Evan Dobbins Little Big Band is by far one of the best musical organizations in town. This stellar group of musicians have an intense jazz sound that is not easily matched. Without a doubt, their performance during our live concert series on Jazz90.1 was one of the best yet."

Rob Linton, MSEd

Station Manager

Midday Host (M-F 10 A.M. - Noon E.T.) Jazz90.1

I have just played “In Time’s Shadow” the new CD from the Rick Holland-Evan Dobbins Little Big Band. What a disc! What a sound! What an ensemble! This disc is my top nomination for jazz ensemble release of the year. The arranging is nonpareil and the soloists masterful. The whole package is varied, listenable, and leaves the audience asking for more. Rick Holland and Evan Dobbins have created a musical experience that our listeners will absorb and enjoy.- Doug Collar
“Jazz Till Midnight

In Time's Shadow features a tasty big band that interprets exciting original compositions and several standards on this warm and welcome program. The band swings hard under the co-leadership of trumpeter Rick Holland and trombonist Evan Dobbins, and achieves a balance of cool sonority along with its fire. -Jim Santella, Cadence Magazine.

Holland and Dobbins triumphantly aggregate mainstream big band theories with a contemporary slant that underscores this irrefutably entertaining succession of works.Glenn Astarita, E-Jazz News

In Time's Shadow reveals that innovation need not sacrifice
accessibility or swing. It is convincing evidence that the big band form is
alive, well and full of surprises. - Thom Jurek, All Music.com

And it is this individual musicianship, particularly with trumpeter Holland, along with the quality of the original compositions that makes In Time's Shadow a treat. - Ollie Bivins—All About Jazz-LA

The broad repertoire his groups encompass and the care with which he deals with musical details are a welcome exception in this age of super specialization and an obsession with quick results at the expense of real quality. - Bill Dobbins, The Eastman School of Music

Don’t let the name mislead you. The only thing small about the Rick Holland/Evan Dobbins Band is its numbers. Everything else is super-size—from the remarkable energy and wall-to-wall sound to the awesome charts by Jim Martin, Brent Wallarab, Kerry Strayer and Bill Dobbins that never fail to bring out the best in the band’s two-trumpet, two-trombone, four reeds and rhythm format. - Jack Bowers, All About Jazz, NY

Dr. Mike's hot picks for june 5th through June 11th...... "... Trumpet and Flugel player Rick Holland's fifth album as a leader features the Rick Holland and Evan Dobbins little big band.. . super release... Rick Holland has produced a winner for 2006!!" - Dr. Mike, radiojazz.com


Where jazz can live and breathe By L. David Wheeler, staff writer Daily Messenger Posted Apr 23, 2008 Honeoye, N.Y. — Jazz is one of the great American art forms, but it’s come to be more valued elsewhere than in the country that gave it birth. 
“Kids don’t have the opportunity to hear the music like they once did,” said trumpeter Rick Holland, who lives in Brockport. “People don’t go out and see music any more. Music like this, to survive, needs a place in public life where it can live and breathe.” 
Thursday, it’ll get that place in Honeoye, when Holland’s band — the Rick Holland-Evan Dobbins Little Big Band, a 10-piece ensemble — joins forces with Honeoye’s high school and middle school jazz ensembles for a 7:30 p.m. concert, the music department’s sixth annual “Evening of Jazz.” The Little Big Band will play cuts from its new release, “In Time’s Shadow,” released in 2005 on the independent Blujazz label. 
Jazz took hold of Holland from a young age, and he studied at the Berklee School of Music in Boston after making a deal with his father, who offered to fund the costs if Holland made all A’s. He studied jazz at Berklee under the mentorship of Herb Pomeroy, a trumpeter who played with Charlie Parker, Lionel Hampton and Stan Kenton before starting the Herb Pomeroy Big Band. 
“It’s like playing for Vince Lombardi, and asking Bart Starr what Vince means to you,” Holland said of his teacher, who died in 2007. 
Later earning a doctorate in classical performance from Michigan State University, Holland has played with the Chicago-based Louis Bellson Big Band and with bands led by Jimmy Dorsey, Buddy De Franco, Terry Gibbs and many others, and taught at Western Michigan University and SUNY Oswego. He has released two albums as the Rick Holland Quartet and two more with Hendrik Merukens (chromatic harmonica and vibraphone) and Little Big Band member Kerry Strayer (saxophone). In recent years, he has moved to the Rochester area and teamed with trombonist Evan Dobbins to head up the Little Big Band, many of whose members are Eastman School of Music faculty, students and alumni. 
The size is perfect for what Holland likes to see from a band. 
“I don’t like over-orchestrated jazz ensembles,” he said. “Everyone in a band this size gets a chance to improvise — any given night, I want any member of the band to be able to do a solo.” There’s a practical side, too: “We’re hoping a 10-piece would be a more ideal size for a festival to book us and afford us and bring us in.” 
He credits the composition work of friends who write specifically for his band, seeing its size and composition — two trumpets, two trombones, three saxes, along with bass, piano and percussion — as an opportunity rather than an obstacle. Among them are Strayer, Jim Martin and Bill Dobbins, father of Holland’s co-leader and an Eastman jazz studies professor. (Bill Dobbins also produced the band’s CD.) 
“These guys have been creative in the way that they’ve taken the seven horns and made the most out of it,” Holland said. “You can really make a lot out of a 10-piece band.” 
These days, Holland is working on opening a music lesson studio business. He’s booking groups of several different sizes: duo, trio, quartet, six-piece swing, 10-piece swing and, of course, the Little Big Band. And he and Dobbins are working on getting the Little Big Band established as a force in area jazz. They’ve had some success on that front: They played at last year’s Rochester International Jazz Fest, for instance. He hopes to do further work with public and educational groups such as the Arts and Cultural Council for Greater Rochester, and seek grants to bring national artists to the area and create partnerships with schools. 
His take on the Rochester jazz scene? “It’s healthy here,” he said. “There are people here who love the music and want to hear it. We’re smaller than a lot of places; this is a place where a band like this, with a little bit of effort and sacrifice, can survive.”