About Allan
C larinetist Allan Vache’ was born Dec. 16, 1953. He graduated from Roosevelt Elementary School, Rahway Junior High School, and Rahway High School, Rahway, NJ, from 1959 to 1971. He also attended Jersey City State College, Jersey City, NJ from 1971 to 1975. Allan studied with David Dworkin of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, and independently with famed jazz artist Kenny Davern.
He performed many professional engagements with such jazz greats as Bobby Hackett, Wild Bill Davison, Pee Wee Erwin, Gene Krupa, Dick Hyman, Max Kaminsky, Clark Terry, Dick Wellstood, Ed Hubble, Cliff Leeman, Bob Haggart, Jack Lesberg, and many others. He also made numerous appearances with his brother, famed jazz cornetist Warren Vache’, Jr.
From 1974-1975 Allan appeared in the Broadway musical “Doctor Jazz” at the Winter Garden theater, starring Bobby Van and Lola Falana. He performed with a band that appeared onstage, and Luther Henderson and Dick Hyman wrote instrumental arrangements.
In late 1975 Allan joined the Jim Cullum Jazz Band of San Antonio, Texas, formerly “The Happy Jazz Band.” He traveled extensively with this band to Europe, Australia, and Mexico, as well as to many concert and festival appearances throughout the U.S.
He has recorded nine albums and compact discs with this band, including the only jazz CD of the entire score of Gershwin’s “Porgy and Bess,” released on CBS Masterworks records. Concerts of “Porgy & Bess,” many featuring opera great William Warfield as narrator, were performed by Vache’ and the band throughout the Western hemisphere, including The Kennedy Center in Washington D.C., and “The Cervantino Arts Festival” in Mexico City, for the U.S. State Department.
Allan has appeared in several “World Series of Jazz” concerts in San Antonio. These concerts featured the Cullum band alongside such jazz luminaries as Benny Goodman, Pete Fountain, Joe Venuti, Teddy Wilson, Scott Hamilton, Bob Wilber, and many others.
Allan appeared with Cullum at Carnegie Hall at the “Tribute to Turk Murphy” concert in January 1987. He has also performed with Cullum on the CBS Morning News, and PBS television show “Austin City Limits.” He also performed on NPR’s “A Prairie Home Companion” with Garrison Keillor, and was a regular performer on PRI’s “Riverwalk – Live from the Landing,” from 1987-1992. This program aired on over 200 public radio stations in the U.S. and abroad. Many of these shows are still rebroadcast today.
In the summer of 1992 Allan left San Antonio to pursue a freelance career. Since that time he has appeared as a solo performer at several jazz festivals and parties around the country and abroad. He has appeared with pop performers Bonnie Raitt and Leon Redbone and can be heard on the soundtrack of the 1998 film “The Newton Boys”.
In 1993 he moved to Orlando, FL to perform at various Orlando attractions, including Walt Disney World and Church Street Station.
Vache’ has numerous recordings to his credit, several under his own name, for various labels. These include Audiophile, Jazzology, Arbors, Sweet Jazz, and Nagel-Heyer, of Hamburg, Germany.
His latest CD’s are “Ballads, Burners & Blues”, released in March of 2004, which includes his wife, Vanessa Vache’, on clarinet, as a special guest, “With Benny in Mind”, a tribute to Benny Goodman, released in November of 2006, both for the Arbors label, “Classic Jazz Duets” with pianist Mark Shane on the Sweet Jazz label of Hilton Head, SC, released in August of 2007, and on the Arbors label “Look to the Sky” released in 2010 and “It Might As Well Be Swing” released in 2018.
Having toured in Australia, Germany, The Netherlands, Scandinavia, Russia, Austria, England, Scotland, Ireland, Italy, Poland, Switzerland, Spain, France, Brazil, and Israel, Allan continues to work as a freelance artist in the Orlando area as well as appearing at many concerts and festivals in the U.S. and around the world.