Lou Varuzzo
Raised in the Hudson Valley, Lou started on guitar and switched to drums at age 10. While studying with local jazz drummer Charlie Morano, he found additional early inspiration in the playing of Steve Gadd, Harvey Mason, Dave Weckl, and, of course, Buddy Rich. While still in high school, he studied classical percussion at Julliard under the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra’s principal percussionist, David Fein; subsequent studies included time at SUNY Purchase under New Jersey Percussion Ensemble founder Ray Des Roches and Hudson Valley Philharmonic’s Timpanist, Charles Barbour. Lou also studied drum set at The Modern Drum shop in NYC with Joe Cusatis. Lou began honing his live chops as a teenager during weekly gigs with jazz fusion outfit Second Wind. “It was an intense incubation period,” says Lou. “I’d practice all day in New York at Julliard and sometimes play tympani with an orchestra at Avery Fisher Hall—then I’d come straight home and play the Jury Room in Poughkeepsie with Second Wind.”
Next recruited by local trumpeter Jim Osborn, Lou kept the beat for Osborn’s seven-to-eight-piece big band for 16 years, playing shows, concerts, weddings, and clubs. “Playing in Jim’s band was great, because it forced me to be able to play all styles of music,” the drummer explains. In the 1990s, while serving in his present post as director of education at the Paul Effman Music School, Lou played in his Osborn bandmate Steve Raleigh’s group and as a freelancer, performing with the Hudson Valley Philharmonic and at venues like the Mid-Hudson Civic Center and West Point’s Eisenhower Hall.
And now, with all that experience in his stick bag, at last it’s Lou’s time to shine. But
Posterity isn’t just the culmination of his four decades of experience. Nor is it simply an homage to some of his favorite music and musicians. Really, it’s an infectious love letter to the sheer joy of music making itself.
“I didn’t want this album to just be a ‘drummer’s record’—you don’t have to be heavy into jazz to enjoy it,” offers Lou. “For me, good grooves are what it’s all about.”
And with Lou Varuzzo behind the kit, good grooves are what you get. Always.
www.louvaruzzo.com
Photographer: Justin Varuzzo
Musician: Lou Varuzzo