Floyd LeFlore

Floyd LeFlore was a St. Louis trumpeter and composer, and nephew of the local musician Clarence “Bucky” Jarman. In the mid-1960s, LeFlore returned to the city after serving in the military; he then played in the Oliver Lake Art Quartet before helping to found the Black Artists’ Group in 1968. During the early 1970s, LeFlore appeared on several albums with the Human Arts Ensemble, and he spent several years performing in Paris along with the BAG touring ensemble, garnering warm reviews from European critics. He has worked as a sideman with performers ranging from Sun Ra to bluesman Albert King, and, over the past decade, he has been a featured performer in several concerts produced by the New Music Circle, the nation’s oldest continuously operating presenter of newly composed music. These appearances have included his music/theater piece “Ritualistic Revival,” with LeFlore in the role of the Rev. Alonzo Alphonso Jones. His first recording as a leader, the 1997 CD “City Sidewalk Street Song Suite,” was praised by jazz critic Terry Perkins for combining “elements of straight-ahead jazz, R&B, funk and traditional children’s street rhymes into a seamless and highly entertaining recording.” More recently, LeFlore has performed around the bi-state area along with Freddy Washington as part of the Divinity Jazz Quintet.