Have saxophone, will travel. With apologies to Paladin, that sums up the career of reed player Greg Abate. Since the early 1990s, he’s been a true-blue ambassador for bebop, at home in southern New England and at venues all over the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. Less frequent international forays have taken him as far as Moscow and Georgia—the former Soviet republic, not the southern state associated with his early musical boss Ray Charles.
Abate, who turns 75 on May 31, estimates that in a normal year, he averages 225 days on the road. After the extended pandemic lull that kept him at home in Rhode Island composing, practicing, and Zoom teaching, he resumed traveling last fall. That itinerary included 19 gigs in England between October 28 and November 23, working with 17 different rhythm sections.
Studio time is also fairly regular. (Whaling City Sound), spent seven straight weeks at No. 1 on the radio charts and was a Editor’s Pick (in the July 2021 issue). This kind of success, in his mind, has been a long time coming. Abate says he’s only felt confident about his direction for the past 10 years. A major turning point came when he received a stamp of approval from one of his mentors, the late alto saxophonist Phil Woods.
