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John Calvin “Jack” Gale (1936-2022) was a trombonist, arranger, and composer in New York City for over 50 years. He earned his living on Broadway, in recording studios, big bands, brass quintets, and on Garrison Keillor’s “American Radio Company of the Air.” He prided himself on being able to play many styles of music convincingly and worked in virtually all areas of the New York music business, including jazz, classical, popular, and a personal favorite: Dixieland. In addition to music, Jack Gale was known as a warm, humorous person who loved Chinese food and the challenges of parking in New York. 

Born in Wichita, Kansas to amateur musicians, Gale heard the song “Cry of the Wild Goose” by Frankie Laine on the radio and was inspired to take up the trombone. He began to study composition at Wichita State, where he also wrote arrangements for and played with the local band “The Continentals.” He left Wichita to travel with bandleaders Jimmy “Dancing Shoes” Palmer and then Buddy Morrow.

Being drafted into the Army in 1959 proved to be fortuitous. His musical skills allowed him to attend the Naval School of Music in Annapolis and later be stationed at the Brooklyn Army Terminal where he played in the band. While in the Army, Gale used his spare time to meet musicians in NYC and started playing gigs. He also met his future wife, Julie Gale (nee Kellas), who lived in the apartment next door on Avenue B in Manhattan.

While in the Army, Jack married Julie. They later moved to a small apartment on 95th Street. He soon landed a trombone chair for “Let It Ride,” the first of what would become at least 46 Broadway pit orchestra jobs. In the 1960s, before and between Broadway musicals, he performed in the trombone sections of Maynard Ferguson’s and Woody Herman’s touring bands.

Through the 1960s and 1970s, Gale’s New York performing opportunities broadened. He played in hundreds of recording sessions for commercials, film scores, and in studio orchestras backing singers Tony Bennett, Nat King Cole, Barbra Streisand, Peggy Lee, Julie London, and many others. He also toured with Benny Goodman’s sextet and trombonist Kai Winding and was also involved in several concert series of classic jazz produced by the Smithsonian Institution.

Jack and Julie Gale lived together in NYC for several years before moving to Harrington Park, New Jersey, where the couple’s only child, daughter Catherine Gale, was born. Gale passed his passion for music on to Catherine, a jazz vocalist and educator.







Gale and several colleagues formed the Manhattan Brass Quintet, playing school concerts in the “Young Audiences” program in NYC. The members of the quintet varied over the 12 years he played with it but often included his brother, trumpeter David Gale, Gary Johnson, Bill Stanley, and Jay Silva. Gale used the group as impetus to arrange and compose hundreds of new works for brass quintet, many of which are published and still in print. His brass arrangements and compositions brought him renown among brass players worldwide. Several pieces have become essential repertoire to this day, including a suite of songs from Leonard Bernstein’s “West Side Story” originally written for the Empire Brass and authorized by Maestro Bernstein himself for publication.

Gale was the regular trombonist and occasional arranger for Rob Fisher’s “Coffee Club Orchestra” on the Garrison Keillor radio show when it moved to NYC in the early 1990s. With that ensemble, he also played the “Encores” theater series at City Center.

Jack Gale taught many private students, as well as trombone and jazz combos at the Manhattan School of Music in the jazz/commercial program for over thirty years. He developed a series of jazz etudes to help his students understand the jazz idiom which he published and later adapted as duets and quartets.

Throughout his career, Gale was an active member of the AFM, first as a member of Local 297 (Wichita) and then Local 802. In the 1980s, Jack helped form the MEMBERS Party, (Make Every Musician Benefit from Efficient Responsible Service), which won office in 1982 starting a new era for the local. He served on many boards and committees within Local 802. He introduced a bylaw establishing a building fund that made it possible for the NYC musicians union to purchase the building on W. 48th Street it owns to this day. He also served as president of the New York chapter of the Recording Musicians Association.

Jack’s last full-time job in a Broadway orchestra was the 2003-2005 production of “Wonderful Town,” although he continued to freelance, arrange, and teach into his later years.

Catherine Gale was raised in a family of musicians, and has been singing since the age of three. Her father, legendary trombonist Jack Gale and uncle trumpeter David Gale were her earliest teachers. For more than 15 years, she performed as a freelance singer in and around New York City. In 2008, she moved to Ithaca, NY where she frequently performs with her husband Mike Titlebaum, and many other local musicians. She has served on the faculty at Ithaca College, and at New York University where she taught jazz voice for over 10 years. Since moving to central New York state, she has sung with many groups including The Deep Dive Big Band, Music Because Music, the Ithaca Jazz Quartet/Quintet, Village Swing, the Central New York Jazz Orchestra, and Walter White's "Small Medium @ Large." Though much of her work is as a featured singer, Ms. Gale has always been a performer in jazz vocal groups as well. She toured extensively with Swing Fever, and over the years has been a member of such groups as The Swing Syndicate, Lance Hayward Singers, New Voice of Hope, & Sharp Five. She attended Oberlin College, and completed her Bachelor of Music in jazz vocal performance at the Manhattan School of Music.

Bruce Bonvissuto has performed in virtually every area of the music scene - from Broadway to Birdland, Carnegie Hall to the White House, the NYC recording studios to Lincoln Center -  with some of the greatest musicians on the planet and for the greatest stars in the universe. A few highlights: JJ Johnson's Brass Orchestra recording, The Firebird on Public TV with the Discovery Orchestra, Dave Brubeck's Big Band 85th Birthday Concert at Carnegie Hall, U.S. & international tours with the Metropolitan Brass Quartet, South Africa tour w/Shirley Bassey and the Carnegie Hall production of West Side Story with Marin Alsop. Performances with Tony Bennett, Natalie Cole, Ray Charles,  John Pizzarelli,  Carly Simon, Barry Manilow, Bonnie Raitt, Weird Al, Betty Buckley, Celine Dion, The Temptations, Vic Damone, Liza Minelli, Steve & Eydie, Rosemarie Clooney, Perry Como, Julie Andrews, Ben Vereen, Peggy Lee, Sammy Davis, Jr., Petula Clark, Maureen McGovern, Victor Borge, The Four Tops, Luther Vandross, Diana Ross, Johnny Mathis, Patti LuPone, Debbie Gravitte, Marilyn Horne, Frederica von Stade, Paul Anka, Gladys Knight, Billy Eckstine, Garrison Keillor, A Prairie Home Companion (NPR, Town Hall), Cab Calloway, The Four Tops and countless others. Concerts with Discovery Orchestra, Musica Sacrae, The Russ Kassoff Big Band, The American Theater Orchestra, Queens Symphony, Opera Orchestra of NY, Brooklyn Philharmonic, The American Symphony, NY Virtuosi. Broadway shows include Dreamgirls, Big River, Jerome Robbins' Broadway, Gypsy, Anything Goes , Chicago and  thirty years of NY City Center ENCORES. Movie credits include The Post, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, The Morning After, In and Out, The Bird Cage. TV appearances on The Today Show, Conan O'Brien, Guiding Light, NHK (Japan), PBS, and KBS (S. Korea). Premiers of works by Bruce Adolphe, Alan Hovhaness, Vivian Fine, Alfred Schnittke, William Schuman, Krysztof Penderecki, Robert Starer and others. A Juilliard graduate (BM, MM), he has served on the faculties of Brooklyn College, Hunter College, Charles Colin Studios and the Juilliard Prep Division.

Brian Bonvissuto, a graduate of both Manhattan School of Music (BM) & Lehman College (MA), Brian, has performed or recorded on Trombone with Blood, Sweat & Tears, Lionel Hampton, The Duke Ellington Orchestra, Mark Tremonti, Marlene VerPlank, Al Martino, Steve Turre, Joe Lovano & The Analog Jazz Orchestra to name a few. Brian has also played in the pit or on stage for various Broadway shows such as Chicago the Musical, The Color Purple, Gypsy (starring Patti LuPone), Come Fly Away & How The Grinch Stole Christmas. In addition to performing Brian is an in demand NYC arranger, copyist and music librarian.

Saxophonist/composer/arranger Mike Titlebaum (he/him/his) is Professor of Music Performance and Director of Jazz Studies at Ithaca College, where he directs the Ithaca College Jazz Ensemble, coaches combos, teaches jazz saxophone and courses in jazz standards, arranging, and others. In 2010, he founded the Ithaca College Jazz Ensemble Composition Contest, which was endowed in 2017 with a generous gift by David P. ('60) and Susan W. Wohlhueter. He is also the director of the college's annual Commencement Eve Concert.

Titlebaum is the editor of several updated versions Jack Gale's "24 Jazz Etudes" and "12 Jazz Duets", published by Art of Sound Music in 2025. He is the author of the book "Jazz Improvisation Using Simple Melodic Embellishment," published by Routledge/Taylor and Francis in May 2021, and is co-editor of "Teaching School Jazz: Perspectives, Principles and Strategies," published by Oxford University Press in 2019.

Titlebaum has performed and given workshops and lectures at numerous state and national conferences, including the Jazz Education Network, the North American Saxophone Alliance, the International Society for Improvised Music, the New York State School Music Association, the New York State Band Directors Association, and the Texas Music Educators Association.

He has played in many of New York's famous musical venues, including the Blue Note, Smalls, Augies, Fez Under Time Cafe, and the legendary CBGB, as well as the pit orchestra of the Broadway musical "Cats" at the Winter Garden Theater. He has performed with the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra, the Binghamton Philharmonic Orchestra, and with other internationally recognized artists and groups, including John Hollenbeck, Gary Versace, Jason Robert Brown, and dozens more. He performed the premiere of his recent saxophone concerto composition “Lifelong Adventure” with the Eastman Wind Orchestra in November 2021. Titlebaum has published compositions and arrangements through Lorenz/Heritage Jazz Works, Advance Music/Schott, and GIA Publications.

Titlebaum earned his BM in Saxophone Performance and the Performer's Certificate from the Eastman School of Music in 1991. He received his MM in 1992 from Eastman in Jazz and Contemporary Media with an emphasis in Writing Skills.

SAXOPHONE
*Amanda Haussmann, alto
Isaac Hophan, alto
Colin Leary, tenor
James Baker, tenor
Trent Howland, baritone

TRUMPET
*Bowie Beecher, co-lead
James Owens, co-lead
Lamar Williams
Lizzy Carvell


*=Section leader

TROMBONE
*Jamie DiSalvo
Estelle Kamrass
Elvis Lazo
David Miller, bass

RHYTHM
Jackson Wade, bass
Vilhjálmur Thorarensen, bass
*Andrew Woodruff, piano
Michael Scamacca, guitar
Connor Thomas, drums
Lucas Davidson, drums
Willow Black, vibes/percussion