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Herb Pomeroy was born Irving Herbert Pomeroy, III on April 15, 1930 in Gloucester, Massachusetts. He began playing trumpet at an early age, and in his early teens started gigging in the greater Boston area, claiming inspiration from the music of Louis Armstrong. By age 16, he became a member of the Musicians Union and after high school, went on to study music at the Schillinger House that is now the Berklee College of Music in Boston. It was here he developed his interest in bebop.

Herb Pomeroy studied dentistry at Harvard University for a year but dropped out to pursue his jazz career. Charlie Parker liked Pomeroy’s playing and hired him frequently when the alto saxophonist performed at Boston’s Hi-Hat and Storyville clubs. Pomeroy also played with Lionel Hampton, Duke Ellington, Stan Kenton and Serge Chaloff among other jazz musicians.

He led his own 13-piece big band in the early 1950s and another that gained national acclaim later in the decade. He would back up singers like Mel Torme, Tony Bennett, Irene Kral, Ella Fitzgerald and Frank Sinatra. By the mid Sixties he began abandoning the big band sound for small combos and switched from trumpet to flugelhorn.

Although his first love was performing, Pomeroy was a respected educator. He helped found the Jazz Workshop on Stuart Street, joined the faculties of the Berklee School of Music where he taught for 41 years, the Lenox School of Music, Music at MIT and was the director Festival Jazz Ensemble for 22 years. He was inducted into the International Association of Jazz Educators (IAJE) Hall of Fame and the Down Beat Jazz Education Hall of Fame. On August 11, 2007, Herb Pomeroy, trumpeter and flugelhornist in the swing and bebop tradition passed away.

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