Bobby Watson

Saxophonist and bandleader Bobby Watson and Horizon at the Greer Cabaret, Downtown Pittsburgh - featuring Victor Lewis, Edward Simon, Carroll Dashiell, Jr. and Giveton Gelin

A native of Kansas City, Kan., Bobby Watson is considered one of the great present-day alto saxophonists. A graduate of the University of Miami, he moved to New York and began to play with the city’s finest musicians: Max Roach, Louis Hayes, George Coleman, and Sam Rivers.

From 1977-81, he was a member of Art Blakey & The Jazz Messengers.

Watson launched the first edition of Horizon, one of post-bop’s most significant small groups, in the early 1980s.

In 2000, after three decades in New York, Watson returned to Kansas City where he was awarded the first William and Mary Grant/Missouri Professor of Jazz as an endowed chair and appointed UMKC’s Director of Jazz Studies.