“We were the kings of self-indulgence, but eventually we earned our right to charge a quarter at the door. “Don’t forget the interminable Dead-like solos we were taking,” Beckenstein cracks. This young man, of course, remains a member to this day. Around this time, a young keyboardist named Tom Schuman began sitting in when he was only sixteen years old. Tuesday just happened to be the night when most musicians weren’t playing other gigs to pay their bills.

Spyro Gyra, whose odd name has since become world famous, was first known simply as “Tuesday Night Jazz Jams,” a forum wherein Beckenstein and Wall were joined by a rotating cast of characters. I was in the horn sections around town, backing some great vocalists.” “After being confined to classical music for so long, it was heaven. “Not many people know it, but Buffalo was like a mini Chicago back then, with a smoking blues, soul, jazz, even rockabilly scene, of all things,” Beckenstein muses. Wall attended college in California, and after both graduated, Beckenstein stayed in Buffalo’s thriving music scene, where Wall eventually joined him. During summer breaks, he and an old high school friend, keyboardist Jeremy Wall, played gigs together back on Long Island. Beckenstein attended the University at Buffalo, starting out as a biology major before changing to music performance (read classical and avant garde). Their energy and joy in concert match their unmatched musicality.īorn in Brooklyn, bandleader Jay Beckenstein grew up listening to the music of Louis Armstrong, Charlie Parker, Sonny Rollins and Dizzy Gillespie, and started playing the saxophone at age seven. Every year, they continue to exhibit how to remain among a relative handful of artists who will be able to say that they have worked constantly in their 50 year career in the year 2024.

Spyro Gyra rose from humble beginnings in Buffalo, New York in 1974 to their current international prominence in the jazz world. To date, they have logged more than 10,000 shows on six continents and released 35 albums, garnering platinum and gold records along the way. Spyro Gyra has long been known to its peers in the contemporary jazz world as a “well oiled road machine” due to its relentless schedule of 48 years of performing.

Spyro 2000