2010-11 Season
Last season, for the 3d year in a row, over 1400 people enjoyed concerts by the world-class performers who graced our stages, and more than 300 heard those same artists drop musical science at free public workshops—"religious experiences," one attendee dubbed them long ago. It took us a while (thanks for waiting!), but we're finally ready to up the ante and do it again.
Admission is a recession-friendly $15 General Admission and $10 for students & seniors. Advance tickets will be available at People's Records, Missing Link, and the Works—and (along with discounted season tickets) here at our website. Each of the season's artists will also present a workshop or clinic, usually the morning after the scheduled concert, which is free and open to the public. As the season unfolds, click on each artist's name below to navigate to a web page devoted to him or her. And feel free to contact us at rja@redwoodjazzalliance.org with questions, comments--and donations!
Jump to: Next Show (Michael Formanek Quartet) Hear this season's artists by starting the audio player to the right: |
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Chris Potter's Underground We're opening big: the hard-blowing saxophonist Chris Potter has been tearing up the critics' polls—not to mention the bandstands and concert stages—for over fifteen years now: the Detroit Free Press calls him simply "the most compelling saxophonist of his generation." Audiences agree, and even though he's pushing 40, Potter has joined the pantheon of Young Gods worshipped by jazz students all over the world. (He's "[o]ne of the most studied (and copied) saxophonists on the planet," says DownBeat.) Sideman to everyone from Red Rodney to Steely Dan, Potter played key roles in late 90s & early 00s groups led by Paul Motian, Dave Holland and Dave Douglas. Underground, his five-year-old working quartet, layers Potter's impeccable post-bop sensibility over a foundation of deep, freewheeling funk. The band comes to us direct from the Monterey Jazz Festival.
www.chrispottermusic.com |
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Tom Harrell Quintet It's no hyperbole to say that Harrell vies for the title of greatest living trumpeter. What makes him all the more remarkable—apart from his decades-long struggle with schizophrenia—is his long and prolific career as an outstanding composer of sublimely lyrical melodies. ("Pure melodic genius," says Newsweek.) After fruitful apprenticeships with Horace Silver and Phil Woods in the 70s and 80s, Harrell went on to form his own bands, and each of his twenty-odd albums as a leader has appeared on numerous "Top 10" lists. His current quintet is a tight, energetic unit filled with younger players who convey the sheer joy of Harrell's music.
tomharrell.com |
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Michael Blake Band: "The World Awakes"—A Tribute to Lucky Thompson Blake (who appeared here in 2008 with Ben Allison's "Man Size Safe") is a former member of John Lurie's Lounge Lizards and a veteran of New York's 1990s downtown scene. He's released a series of acclaimed albums on influential indie labels (Intuition, Knitting Factory, Clean Feed, Stunt, Songlines), leading an array of innovative groups who, as All About Jazz puts it, manage "to simultaneously embrace jazz history while challenging it head on." That description fits this project perfectly: with collaborators including members of his Danish quartet Blake Tartare, Blake pays a moving, tuneful tribute (in the form of covers and originals) to under-appreciated saxophonist and composer Lucky Thompson, who fell into self-exile, then obscurity, after a promising career in the 50s and 60s.
www.michaelblake.net |
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Vijay Iyer Trio It's hard to think of a young player whose star is brighter than Vijay Iyer's. His trio CD, "Historicity," topped everyone's 2009 Top 10 list (it likewise won Album of the Year in the 2010 DownBeat Critics Poll, which also saw the trio take the "Rising Star Jazz Group" category); the Jazz Journalists Association named him 2010 Musician of the Year; and for a while there, as NPR's A Blog Supreme noted, he was the unofficial Toast of the Jazz Internet. The attention is completely deserved: the self-taught pianist and polymath composer (he has a Ph.D. in Technology and the Arts from Berkeley) with a penchant for spiky covers makes "challenging" music that's also totally listenable. Iyer is a huge talent; this is his breakout moment.
www.vijay-iyer.com |
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Ron Miles-Gary Versace-Matt Wilson Trio (Owing to a family emergency, Rudy Royston will substitute for Matt Wilson. Please see event web page.) Wilson, a welcome repeat visitor to the RJA, has a reputation as the class clown of contemporary jazz. What that really means is that he knows how to put audiences and fellow musicians completely at ease. One of the most exuberant, versatile, and respected (by his peers) drummers working today, Wilson has played with just about anyone you could name in the past two generations. And while he leads two working bands of his own, he also has a knack for engineering imaginative and sometimes unexpected collaborations. He and trumpeter Ron Miles have teamed up in several different settings, most recently in an amazing duo at the 2010 Ottawa Jazz Festival. Miles, meanwhile, is known for his sensitive playing in a variety of contexts, most notably, perhaps, in collaborations with such guitar heros as Bill Frisell and (more recently) Charlie Hunter. When in-demand keyboardist Gary Versace—a veteran of the Claudia Quintet, the Refuge Trio, and Matt Wilson's Arts & Crafts—joins in, it's bound to be another revelatory encounter.
mattwilsonjazz.com | ron miles myspace | garyversace.com |
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Ambrose Akinmusire Quintet We round off the season with another rising star: Oakland native, Berkeley High grad, Monk Competition winner—and now Blue Note recording artist and newest member of the SF Jazz Collective—Ambrose Akinmusire. The fiercely talented young trumpeter has been making a name for himself over the past few years, studying and playing with a wide variety of jazz elders (Wallace Roney, Jimmy Heath, Herbie Hancock) and young mavericks (Jason Moran, Esperanza Spalding, Linda Oh) while drawing inspiration from sources as diverse as Chopin and Bjork. In his working quintet he gathers some of the best emerging talent on the New York scene. They'll be touring behind their April Blue Note debut.
www.ambroseakinmusire.com |
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JUST ADDED! Our First-Ever Post-Season Show: Formanek's formidable bass has propelled groups from the Mingus Big Band to Tim Berne’s Bloodcount and has backed artists as diverse as Chet Baker and Elvis Costello. A bandleader and composer in his own right, Formanek returned to the studio last year for the first time in over a decade--and made listeners and critics very happy. (The album, his ECM debut, is called The Rub and Spare Change, and it landed on many high-profile "Best of 2010" lists.) With an all-star band of experienced and gifted colleagues, the bassist leads an outgoing program of pieces whose unorthodox constructions set up strong solos and fiery group interaction.
www.michaelformanek.com |
