Sam Rivers was an American jazz musician and composer.
Though most famously a tenor saxophonist, Sam Rivers also performed on soprano saxophone, bass clarinet, flute, harmonica, tuba, piano, and viola. While he played in the 1950s he rose to fame in the 1960s during the rise of the free jazz movement. In the 1970s he and his wife Beatrice opened a jazz loft named Studio RivBea in the Noho District in New York, which became the most famous of the lofts. In the early 1990s he and his wife moved to Orlando, FL, where he expanded his orchestra compositions and performed regularly with his orchestra and trio.
This is a collaboration between the Center for American Music, Theodore M. Finney Music Library, and Archives & Special Collections.