Francis E. "Bud" DeTar was a long time resident of Brockport, NY. Born in Albion, NY, in 1922 and died on November 23, 2008. A well known local musician, Bud was a graduate of Rochester's Jefferson High School (1938), SUNY Brockport and the Eastman School of Music. Bud was an Army combat veteran of World War II in Europe. He served on the faculty of the music department at SUNY Brockport. Throughout his life Bud was a performing musician and bandleader in the Rochester area, with The Dixieland Ramblers, The Gates Swingers and other popular groups. The concerts performed by The Bud DeTar Big Band at the SUNY Brockport campus, several seasons in the 1990's, were quite memorable.
Dan Tepfer — whom New York magazine dubbed “one of the moment’s most adventurous and relevant musicians” — has criss-crossed the globe over the past several years. The broad success of the pianist’s 2011 album Goldberg Variations / Variations — an improvisational exploration of J.S. Bach’s masterpiece — led to packed concerts from London’s Wigmore Hall, Chicago’s Ravinia Festival and SF Jazz in San Francisco to events in Berlin, Prague, Tokyo, Vancouver and Manhattan’s Le Poisson Rouge, with The New York Times declaring the latter performance “riveting and inspiring.” Tepfer followed that with Small Constructions, a studio-savvy 2013 album with reed player Ben Wendel, as well as his ongoing collaboration with sax icon Lee Konitz.