By Eric Olsen, Special to the Seattle Times
In 1992, saxophonist Michael Brockman and drummer Clarence Acox led a “pickup group” of Seattle jazz musicians through some of Duke Ellington’s deep catalog at the University of Washington’s Meany Hall. They’d been staging an annual Ellington concert for three years. But this time, “We looked at each other,” Brockman remembers, “and said, ‘You know, there’s an audience for this.’”
Three years later, the longtime friends and bandmates pulled off what Brockman calls “the craziest thing possible.” They started a permanent jazz orchestra in a town that was not Chicago, New Orleans or New York. “We had a firm belief that there was an audience waiting for us to do it right,” says Brockman.
So far, there has been. Seattle Repertory Jazz Orchestra is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year, honoring the legacy with the SRJO Founders Concert Brockman — who served as co-artistic director with Acox until 2022 when Acox stepped back, and has since been sole artistic director — just announced his planned retirement in 2026.