A 50-year veteran in music, Bobby Read has done (much) of it all.

He's a saxophonist/woodwind player, studio engineer and producer, composer. Bobby has played in a huge variety of musical contexts, rock, jazz, folk, classical groups & theatre groups. He has composed for his various bands, for many modern dance productions and theatre productions in the DC area, and several National Geographic shows.

In the studio, Read has recorded and/or produced or played on over 250 cds/vinyl in many iterations of his recording studio, currently and hopefully forever in Charlottesville, Va.

Bands include the early Prog Rock band 'However', the 'chamber folk' group 'Trapezoid', the funky wacky music of 'Modereko', years of playing jazz with John D'earth at Millers in Charlottesville, and his own band 'Igniter'. Links to cds by those groups are here on the site.

He has also played thousands of gigs over 20 years as saxophonist, woodwind and wind synth player as a member of Bruce Hornsby and The Noisemakers, including the opening of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Woodstock '99, The Jackson Family Honors, Olympics events, for President Clinton twice, and even for skater Brian Bointano.

Over the years, the list of people he has had the opportunity to perform/jam with in the Bruce band kept growing - Bonnie Raitt, Branford Marsalis, Eric Clapton, Chick Corea, Don Henley, Pat Metheny, members of Los Lobos and the Black Crowes, most of the Grateful Dead, and numerous others.

In addition, Bobby was on all of the Hornsby cds from 1993-2013, featured in several full length videos, and on numerous tv performances. He is extremely grateful to have had the  incredible experience playing Bruce's great music with an amazing band.

In 2006-7, Bobby released his first 2 'solo' jazz records. With great bands on each, Read's compositions are featured on both "Monkfish" and "Simbia", and 2 kids and a number of years in-between, in 2017 he released "Saturn Blue" and "Out of My Mind", all compositions by Read.

2019 saw the release of Our Brief Span of time, an almost purely solo album of songs. And now in 2026, Days of Wonder. Influenced by love of Gabriel, Todd Rundgren, Steely Dan, Thomas Dolby and, well really all rock history.. but particularly those who similarly made records largely by themselves.

Details on all these are here on his label website, smallworldrecords.space