ABOUT
As a youngster, Lee Rothenberg was a frequent passenger in his brother Mike’s car, an old Honda Civic hatchback with a modified stereo system. Mike was twelve years Lee’s senior, so it was an understandable thrill for Lee, then a six-year-old, to be out with his brother driving the streets of Philadelphia with the stereo cranking out classic rock hits. Those outings had a powerful effect on Lee’s imagination and set in motion his desire to play the guitar. Lee’s parents, however, had different plans, and for the next seven years Lee would instead study classical piano. But at thirteen and armed with a pocket full of bar mitzvah money, Lee bought his first guitar, a Yamaha steel string acoustic, and the classical piano lessons faded into the background. Lee developed an immediate passion for the instrument and spent hours jamming with friends at his parent’s house, playing many of the songs he’d been exposed to by his brother… but the development of artistic sensibility is something of a mystery, and it wasn’t very long before Lee’s ears began to wander.
At sixteen, he attended the Interlochen Arts Camp in Northern Michigan where the trajectory of his musical development made an acute shift. In the listening room at Interlochen, Lee discovered recordings of Jazz guitar greats Wes Montgomery and Pat Martino, and he experienced a kind of awakening.
There was a depth to the harmony, the rhythmic patterns, and the melodies that fascinated me and made me feel things a hadn’t felt before--not in music or any other art form. I had very little knowledge of the underlying theory that was at work, but I was drawn to it very emotionally . It was as if some internal switch had been turned on. I left Interlochen with a ‘jazz bug’ that persists to this day.” - Lee
Back home in Philadelphia, Lee developed a relationship with professional jazz guitarist, Dave Manley,who encouraged Lee to sit in with him on weekends at his solo guitar gig playing jazz standards. Dave became an early mentor who spent hours jamming with Lee and helped him to develop his early jazzvocabulary and individual voice. During this time, Lee won the “Outstanding Jazz Soloist Award” at a regional high school Jazz competition and was awarded a $200 prize. He used the money to arrange a private lesson with Pat Martino, who he’d learned was a Philadelphia native.
After graduating from high school in Philadelphia, Lee attended the prestigious Northwestern University in Evanston, IL, a close neighbor to the city of Chicago. He studied math and economics at Northwestern, and played in the university jazz ensembles, but the bulk of his jazz education took place informally, outside the reach of any institutional influence. He studied privately with well-known guitarist Bobby Broom and with pianist Mike Kocour. He became a constant fixture at Chicago area jazz clubs and was greatly influenced by the city’s top players including pianist Ron Perrillo, whose trio played a weekly gig at Pete Miller’s in Evanston, very near the Northwestern campus. Lee was captivated by the transcendent beauty in Perillo’s playing and became a regular at the trios’ gigs, and it was there that Lee met Perrillo’s Bass Player, Dennis Carroll, who’d become the most important influence on Lee’s growth as an artist and musician.
Dennis was a mentor to me for years. He stressed listening to horn players like Stanley Turrentine and Eddie Harris in order to learn how to carefully phrase within a phrase. It’s these subtletieswithin the music that I’m still after, and which provide the greatest opportunities for growth.
With his formative years behind him, Lee has steadily become a sought-after talent who’s played nearly all of Chicago’s important Jazz venues and performed with many of the city’s most accomplished musicians, including George Fludas, Greg Ward, Chris Foreman, Dennis Carroll, Greg Rockingham and Dan Trudell. He’s shared the stage with internationally known artists Randy Brecker and Ira Sullivan,Roberta Gambarini and he was a featured soloist with the Chicago Jazz Orchestra’s tribute to Billy Strayhorn at the 2015 Chicago Jazz Festival.
Lee is currently a member of Soul Message Band with Chris Foreman and Greg Rockingham who worked previously as the Deep Blue Organ Trio. The group has released three albums, Soulful Days (2019, Delmark Reords), Live at Blue Llama (2021, Blue Llama Records), and People (2022, Know You Know Records). Lee is also an integral part of the group DC and the Love, a group led by bassist Dennis Carroll that performs original, difficult to categorize, works.
Lee Holds a bachelor’s degree in mathematics from Northwestern University and a master’s degree in music from DePaul University.
He is also father to a beautiful 2-year-old daughter named Faye (born 2021).
