Warren Vache

A brilliant cornetist who has his own distinctive and beautiful tone, Warren Vache helped invigorate small-group swing when he emerged in the mid-1970s, and has been a strong force ever since. Born in 1951 in Rahway, New Jersey, his father Warren Vache Sr. was a jazz writer and a bassist while his brother Allan Vache is a top-notch clarinetist. Warren Vache Jr. studied trumpet with Pee Erwin and started his career playing in his father’s band. He was with Benny Goodman on and off during 1975-78 and gained experience playing at Eddie Condon’s club. Vache began to record in 1976 and his many recorded collaborations with tenor-saxophonist Scott Hamilton on the Concord label starting in the late 1970s showed that swing was far from dead; it just needed youthful energy and creativity. Vache worked fairly regularly with Hamilton through the mid-1980s, he often guested on Rosemary Clooney’s records and he led albums of his own for Concord through 1989. Vache acted quite effectively in the 1985 film The Gig. Since then, Vache has played with a countless number of pickup groups, and has kept quite busy playing at clubs, classic jazz festivals, on jazz cruises and at jazz parties. Vache has recorded many rewarding albums as a leader for Muse, Zephyr, Arbors and Nagel Heyer and as a sideman with John Bunch, Dick Hyman, Judy Carmichael, George Wein’s Newport Jazz Festival All-Stars, Dan Barrett, Howard Alden, Benny Carter, Ruby Braff, Maxine Sullivan, Bill Charlap, Dave McKenna and the Statesmen of Jazz.