Robert Broom Jr. (born January 18, 1961) is an American jazz guitarist, composer, and educator. He was born and raised in New York City, then moved to Chicago, which has been his home town since 1984.[1] He performs and records with The Bobby Broom Trio and his organ group, The Bobby Broom Organi-Sation. While versed in the traditional jazz (bebop and post-bop) idioms, Broom draws from a variety of American music forms, such as funk, soul, R&B, and blues.[2]
Career
Broom was born in Harlem (1961) and raised on New York City's Upper West Side (1970s). Broom began studying the guitar at age 12, taking lessons first in folk music. A year later, he began studies with jazz guitarist Jimmy Carter in Harlem, where he took weekly lessons for the next two years. He attended the High School of Music and Art (Laguardia High School of Performing Arts), where he played in the jazz ensemble and received an award for Outstanding Jazz Improvisation during his senior year. Broom began his career while still in high school, performing at New York clubs with Charlie Parker pianists, Al Haig, and Walter Bishop, Jr. In 1977 he played at Carnegie Hall in a concert with Sonny Rollins and Donald Byrd.
In 2009 he recorded Bobby Broom Plays for Monk with its cover shot of the red wagon Monk used for the album Monk's Music.[3]
Broom's first release of exclusively original compositions was Upper West Side Story (2012). The album reached No. 1. on the College Music Journal jazz chart and was in the Jazz Week and Down Beat Top Albums of 2012.[4]
As an educator, Broom began his work in 1982 for Jackie McLean, Director of African American Music at Studies for the Hartt School of Music at the University of Hartford. Over the years Broom has also been a lecturer at the American Conservatory of Music (1986–1990), Chicago Musical College — Roosevelt University (1990–1994), The Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz (1987), DePaul University (2002–2008) and North Park University. Since 2000, he has also mentored and taught Chicago high school students for the Ravinia Festival Organization's community outreach Jazz Scholar Program. In 2005 he attended Northwestern University for his master's degree in jazz pedagogy. Broom became a tenured, associate professor in 2022. Broom also engages in local and national jazz competitions as a judge and guest instructor, namely the Evanston Jazz Festival where he was the keynote speaker at its 2023 event.
His fourteenth recording as a leader, Keyed Up, was released in 2022 and picked up admiring reviews in the specialist jazz press.[5]
In May of 2024, he released Jamalot (Live) on the Steele record label with his organ trio, The Bobby Broom Organi-Sation.[6]
