Rich Halley  Rich Halley (born November 25, 1947 in Portland, Oregon) is an American jazz tenor saxophonist and composer. He has released 22 recordings as a leader. As Down Beat described him: “Oregon-based saxophonist Rich Halley has been turning out smart brawny music for a couple of decades”. All About Jazz called his music “a sublime balance of the cerebral and visceral”. Rich Halley is the son of Richard Halley Sr., an economics professor at Portland State University, and Libby Anne Halley, a reading and special education teacher. Growing up, he spent much of his time hiking, camping, hunting and fishing, and at an early age developed a lifelong passion for nature and the outdoors. At 15, he discovered jazz, and immediately became intensely interested in the music. Halley began playing clarinet at age 11 and tenor saxophone at age 15. Halley started playing in big bands and small jazz groups while he was in high school. Between 1965 and 1966 he lived in Cairo, Egypt where he played in a band with an international repertoire. When he arrived at the University of Chicago in 1966 he found himself surrounded by blues music and culture and the explorations of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians. In 1967-68 he played in Home Juice, a blues band in Chicago that included singer/harmonic player Jeff Carp, trumpeter Jordan Sandke, guitarist Paul Asbell, bassist Al McClain and drummer Paul Morris. In 1968, he moved back to the Western United States where he played in Latin bands, rhythm & blues bands and jazz groups in San Francisco, Albuquerque and Portland. His early influences included Sonny Rollins, John Coltrane, Dexter Gordon, Ornette Coleman and Albert Ayler as well as Jim Pepper, who was also from Portland. Between 1968 and 1975, he interspersed periods of musical activity with time spent climbing mountains and exploring the deserts and jungles of the Western US, Mexico and Central America. From 1977-81 Halley performed in the experimental group Multnomah Rhythm Ensemble that explored improvised music in combination with multi-media. His first recording, "Multnomah Rhythms" (Avocet), was released in 1983. During the 80s and 90s, Halley was the leader of the Lizard Brothers, a three or four horn sextet that released five recordings on Avocet and Nine Winds and performed in the US and Canada. The Lizard Brothers featured complex, multi-sectioned charts combined with open improvisation.