Kneebody photo by Paulifornia
Friday, March 13 & Saturday, March 14, 8pm (mainstage performances)
Cornish Playhouse, 201 Mercer St (Seattle Center)
After a successful inaugural festival in 2014, the Seattle Jazz Experience goes full-force into its second year.
Produced by Cornish College of the Arts, in association with Seattle JazzED, Earshot Jazz, and the Seattle Center, the experience is a two-day festival for high school and college jazz students and includes workshops and masterclasses with professional jazz artists, as well as late-night jam sessions and ensemble performances, open to the public.
Participation in the Seattle Jazz Experience is by audition only, and is open to high school and college jazz ensembles worldwide. This year, 20 ensembles were invited to attend the festival. While many groups are from Washington, selected ensembles will also represent Texas, California, and Oregon.
The Seattle Jazz Experience also selects one or two jazz composers each year to feature at the festival. This year, the featured composer is acclaimed Canadian saxophonist Christine Jensen, who has selected three compositions that will be made available to the 2015 participants. She will also conduct clinics with selected ensembles performing her music.
Other guest artists this year include the Julian Lage Trio with Eric Harland and Scott Colley, Kneebody, Robin Eubanks, and Darrell Grant, with mainstage performances by the Julian Lage Trio on March 13 and Kneebody on March 14, both at 8pm.
Kneebody is keyboardist Adam Benjamin, trumpeter Shane Endsley, electric bassist Kaveh Rastegar, saxophonist Ben Wendel, and drummer Nate Wood. The quintet met in their late teens while at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York, and at CalArts in Valencia, California. They became fast friends and converged together as Kneebody amid the vibrant and eclectic Los Angeles music scene of 2001. Since then, each band member has amassed an impressive list of credits and accomplishments while the band has continued to thrive and grow in reputation, solidifying a fan base around the world.
Julian Lage is an American guitarist, composer, and arranger living in New York City. Often categorized as a jazz musician, his music is rooted in both traditional and acoustic forms. Multi-Grammy-nominated drummer Eric Harland is one of the most in-demand drummers of his generation. He had already appeared on close to 200 recordings by his 36th birthday. He has been profiled in the Boston Globe, New York Times, JazzTimes, All About Jazz, The New Yorker, DownBeat, and other prominent publications. Rounding out the trio is Scott Colley, the bassist of choice for such jazz legends as Herbie Hancock, Jim Hall, Andrew Hill, and Michael Brecker. His remarkably empathetic skills, strong melodic sense and improvisational abilities have served him well as a sideman, but Colley has also flourished in recent years as a composer and bandleader.
For festival details, schedule, tickets and background information on guest artists, visit seattlejazzexperience.org.
