Sarasota Honors Rachel Domber

SARASOTA JAZZ CLUB Arbors Records’ Rachel Domber and Her Late Husband, Mat, Receive Prestigious Satchmo Award

The Jazz Club of Sarasota presented its prestigious Satchmo Award to Rachel Domber and her late husband, Mat, founders and operators of Arbors Records, on March 12, at a reception that was part of the pandemic-interrupted Sarasota Jazz Festival. The presentation had been planned as part of the Jazz Club’s 40th anniversary celebration and was hastily rescheduled as musicians and audiences departed under an advisory from Florida governmental officials. Ed Linehan, President of the Jazz Club and Managing Director of the Jazz Festival, said, “We are very pleased to honor the work of Rachel Domber and her late husband, Matthew, by presenting them with the Satchmo award, the Jazz Club’s highest recognition.” The award commemorates the contributions of jazz great Louis Armstrong. Previous award recipients include NEA Jazz Master pianist Dick Hyman and clarinetist/tenor saxophonist Ken Peplowski, who has been Music Director of the festival the last few years. The 2019 Satchmo Award went to tenor saxophonist Houston Person who was scheduled to perform, along with Hyman and Peplowski, at this year’s event. The award is sponsored by the Harold and Evelyn R. Davis Memorial Foundation in memory of Hal Davis, Founder of the Jazz Club of Sarasota. Created in 1987, the award, Linehan said, seeks “to honor those who have made a unique and enduring contribution to the living history of jazz, our original art form. I can’t think of anyone who fits that definition better than the Dombers. Through their efforts, Arbors has produced hundreds of albums since 1989, representing many classic styles of jazz.” Mat Domber was a New York-based lawyer with real estate interests in Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Florida. He was also a jazz fan, record collector, and listener. “We started in 1989 without thinking of establishing a record label,” Rachel Domber recalled, “but only to try to give our friend [clarinetist/saxophonist] Rick Fay something he could sell on the bandstand. It grew into a labor of love, and we now have over 400 recordings in our catalog.” Fay had been a performer at Disney parks in California and Florida but had never recorded as a leader. In addition to making records, Arbors was the originator and producer of March of Jazz weekend jazz parties in Clearwater, FL, which started with bassist Bob Haggart’s 80th birthday in 1994 and continued through 2012, the year of Mat Domber’s death. Arbors is also a sponsor of the Sarasota Jazz Festival and the Suncoast Dixieland Jazz Classic in Clearwater, FL; and has been a generous supporter of the New Jersey Jazz Society. Among Arbors releases in recent years have been Hyman and Peplowski’s Counterpoint, clarinetist/saxophonist Adrian Cunningham’s Adrian Cunningham and His Friends Play the Tunes of Lerner and Loewe, and multi-reedist Scott Robinson’s Tenormore, named Best New Release of 2019 by the readers of JazzTimes Magazine. Violinist Aaron Weinstein recalled to Jersey Jazz that he met Mat and Rachel Domber “at my first professional recording, which was a session for Arbors Records. At the urging of Bucky Pizzarelli, I was hired to be part of what turned out to be Skitch Henderson’s last album . . . Almost immediately thereafter, Mat and Rachel took me under their wing, bringing me into the Arbors family. They gave me opportunities in my late teens and early 20s to work with the world’s greatest jazz musicians and gave me artistic control of the albums I made for them.” Mat Domber, he added, “was like a grandfather to me . . . Mat and Rachel are a modern day Norman Granz. I feel so grateful to have experienced their musical passion, generosity, and friendship.” Among Arbors albums recorded by Weinstein are Handful of Stars (2005) and Blue Too (2008). Reviewing Handful of Stars for AllMusic, Rick Anderson described it as “a startlingly mature and impressively confident debut album from 19-year-old jazz violinist Aaron Weinstein, a young man who plays with a felicitous combination of Stuff Smith’s earthy, powerful attack and Stephane Grappelli’s elegant sophistication.” The ‘stars’ who joined Weinstein on the album included Bucky and John Pizzarelli, Houston Person, Nicki Parrott, and drummer Joe Ascione. When Mat Domber died in September 2012, several musicians paid tribute to him in the pages of Jersey Jazz (November 2012). Drummer/vibraphonist Chuck Redd said Domber, “changed my life by allowing me to begin recording as a leader in 2001. He placed no restrictions on my selection of music or on my choice of accompanying musicians.” Pianist Rossano Sportiello recalled that Domber “wasn’t concerned with selling records, just helping musicians whom he liked. That made him truly unique.” And, trumpeter Randy Sandke, who now lives in Sarasota, called Domber “irreplaceable. I never knew anyone else who had so much fun while giving pleasure to others. He was a friend, mentor, and inspiration.” Rachel Domber

Rachel Domber Keeps the Music Playing ... By Schaen Fox Rachel Domber was interviewed by Jersey Jazz writer Schaen Fox before she knew about the Satchmo Award.

When Mat Domber died in September 2012, it would have been easy for his wife, Rachel, to close down the music company he started more than 30 years ago, but she didn’t. Here’s why.

“Since our first album,” she said, “we became personal friends with all of our musicians. When Mat died, I was terribly upset and wondered what to do with my life because we were so intertwined. . . After he died, I thought about keeping the music alive. I enjoyed it so much I thought I’d just keep doing it. I’m 81, so I don’t know how much longer I can keep going, but I’d like to for as long as I can.

“Our goal from the start,” she continued, “was to pick out some upcoming people and give them a CD to sell off the bandstand. Now, I’m recording some very well known artists, like Rossano Sportiello. I think he is one of the greatest living pianists, and I want him to record a masterpiece. Things like that fulfill me.”

Although the music business is moving away from CDs toward digital downloads, Arbors, Domber said, will continue to sell CDs. “We are getting most of our business from digital downloads, so I guess it’s the wave of the future,” she said, “but I’m still going to produce physical CDs and digital downloads. We still sell a lot of CDs because we have people who want to get the physical product, read liner notes and have the whole thing there.” The March of Jazz weekend jazz parties that the Dombers ran from 1994 to 2012 were legendary. “They were the brainchild of my husband,” she said. “He wanted to have a big jazz party with the best musicians. It cost us a lot of money. We never made a dime off of it, but that wasn’t the point. My husband just thrived on the thing. One year was spectacular. We had Sherrie Maricle and her Diva Jazz Orchestra, and we brought the Tuxedo Big Band of Paul Cheron from Toulouse, France. Bob Wilber was very connected to it. It was exciting to see the all-male band from France and Sherrie’s allfemale American band together.” It might surprise fans of Arbors Record to learn that Rachel Domber was actually a country music fan when she met Mat. “I was an economist working for the government,” she recalled. “He was a consultant with the State Department in Pennsylvania and made an appointment to see me to discuss low income housing. He was trying to get some elderly units for a non-profit group. I only knew Dave Brubeck, Stan Getz, and things like that. When we started dating, I said, ‘I’m sorry, but I can’t imagine going with somebody that doesn’t like country music.’ I loved Tom T. Hall, Bob Wills, and the old-time country music. We started going out to country music things, and he became a huge fan of it.” As for jazz, “He was 10 years older than me, and he knew everything about jazz. He was a fraternity brother with Dick Hyman at Columbia College. Dick was one year older than Mat, so they weren’t very close, but, after classes, Dick would go down to Greenwich Village and play, and Mat would sneak down to watch him. After we got into the music business, they became very good friends, and we had a lot of fun together.” Domber is full of stories about the jazz musicians she and Mat worked with through the years. Ruby Braff and Mat were “very good friends, but Ruby was tough to deal with. One time, he called to talk to Mat, who wasn’t there. He started yelling and screaming about how Mat didn’t know how to do things, so I just slammed the phone down. A few seconds later, the phone rang, and Ruby said, ‘Oh, we must have been disconnected.’ . . . He was nuts, but he was very, very sweet. His soft side came out in his music. He was a master on the cornet.” Bob Haggart “was wonderful. He enjoyed painting and fancy dining, things like that. Kenny Davern was wonderful in his music, but he had a lot of other interests. He loved hiking and nature. He talked a lot about opera and was well versed in a lot of things. We traveled all over Europe with Bob Wilber and Pug, his wife. They were what I call globalists because of their interests beyond music. I like artists that are not just small talk.” Tenor saxophonist Flip Phillips gave the Dombers his flattened saxophone. “I have it hanging in my office,” Domber said. “I guess a car ran over it. Flip and Mat were very close.” In addition to the flattened sax, “Mat and I were big collectors of paintings from Bob Haggart and photographs by Milt Hinton.” All the CDs, Domber said, “are like my little babies. I love them all, and I put a lot of work into every single one . . . The thought of just having lunch with the girls or playing golf, or going to the beach is fine, but I’ve been working ever since I was 16. I love business. That’s why I’m in it. It is mainly for the musicians. I only want to deal with musicians I really admire.” Ruby Braff was "tough to deal with" but "a master on the cornet." Pianists Rossano Sportiello, left, and Dick Hyman are two among many Arbors recording artists.