The Free Bridge Quintet is the official faculty jazz quintet of the University of Virginia McIntire Department of Music. It features Jeff Decker on saxophones, Robert Jospe on the drums, Bob Hallahan on piano, Peter Spaar on bass and John D'earth on trumpet and flugelhorn. The Free Bridge Quintet, was founded in 1997, and debuted in Cabell Hall in January 1998. Each member of the quintet has been associated with the University for many years. John D'earth teaches trumpet, jazz improvisation, and directs the University of Virginia Jazz Ensemble. Jeff Decker began his association with UVA as a graduate student in the history department, has been teaching saxophone and jazz studies in the music department since 1993, and, seemingly having gone full circle, is now in the music department's new Ph.D. program. Bob Hallahan teaches jazz piano at UVA as well as Virginia Commonwealth University. The Free Bridge Quintet was the brainchild of bassist Pete Spaar, who also performs as principle bassist for the Charlottesville University Symphony Orchestra and is a member of the Richmond Symphony Orchestra.. Robert Jospe teaches drums and percussion, and leads a highly successful world beat percussion workshop that has performed in over two hundred schools over the past ten years. With the Free Bridge Quintet audiences can expect to hear jazz performed at the very highest level. All the members are leaders in their own right and have performed nationally and internationally. Most jazz fans know that Free Bridge contains some of the finest jazz musicians in the country. What is also true is that the group is emerging as a strong, and unique, compositional voice. The members of the Free Bridge Quintet are all long-standing members of a deep central Virginia jazz community. One can see and hear them in many different venues playing their original music. It is when these five musicians founded the Free Bridge Quintet in 1997 they brought to the bandstand a wealth of shared performances and a long experience of exploring each other¹s compositions and musical concepts. All of these players can be heard on a wide variety of recordings, including the group's own CD, Spanning Time, as well as Jospe's Blue Blaze and Time to Play, D'earth's Live at Miller's and Restoration Comedy, and Decker's I'll Know. The group's CD, Spanning Time is available at the UVA Bookstore as well as local bookstores. The University of Virginia's Council for the ARts underwrote Free Bridge's debut CD, Spanning Time in the Spring of 1999. The Free Bridge Quintet offers an eclectic inventive program of standards and originals." Judith Shatin writes, "The Freebridge Quintet CD is full of the lively wit, imagination and musicianship that enlivens all that these talented musicians do.