Ralph Alessi photo by Daniel Sheehan
Ralph Alessi’s Baida
Thursday, February 6, 8pm
PONCHO Concert Hall, Kerry Hall
Cornish College of the Arts
710 E. Roy Street (Capitol Hill)
Free masterclass, Cornish College, February 6, noon
Ralph Alessi, trumpet
Gary Versace, piano
Drew Gress, bass
Nasheet Waits, drums
Ralph Alessi’s Baida project – his ECM debut as a bandleader – is breathtaking in its atmospheric depth and melodic allure. Jazz Times says Alessi has “drop-dead trumpet chops” and calls his music “as clean and airy and sophisticated and disciplined as post-modern progressive jazz gets.” On the album, Alessi’s steely quartet – with pianist Jason Moran, bassist Drew Gress and drummer Nasheet Waits – performs with extraordinary strength, clarity and finesse, an enthralling and captivating album experience at-length. Pianist Gary Versace subs on tour for Moran. These are four fearless improvisers dancing on Alessi’s scaffolding.
Alessi was born in San Francisco, the son of classical trumpeter Joe Alessi and opera singer Maria Leone. He studied with legendary bassist Charlie Haden at the California Institute for the Arts, moved to New York City, and soon became a ubiquitous presence on the downtown and Brooklyn scenes. Alessi has been a member of the faculty of the Eastman School of Music and is the founder and director of the Center and School for Improvisational Music, an improvisational music workshops non-profit in Brooklyn. Since 2002, he has been on the jazz faculty at New York University. Alessi has excelled as an improviser in groups led by Steve Coleman, Uri Caine, Ravi Coltrane, Fred Hersch and Don Byron, as well as leading his own bands. Alessi’s Cognitive Dissonance (2010) and This Against That (2002) also feature Moran, Gress and Waits.
Alessi has been playing with Drew Gress since the late 1990s. “What I love about Drew’s playing are the choices he makes as a bass player. … His ears are amazing, and he’s a great composer himself, so he brings that sensibility to the music,” Alessi says.
Organist, pianist, and accordionist Gary Versace has featured in bands led by John Scofield, John Abercrombie, Maria Schneider, Matt Wilson, Lee Konitz, John Hollenbeck and many others. A DownBeat rising star on the Hammond organ, in critics polls in the noughts, Versace has appeared as a leader and a sideman on over 50 recordings with artists on labels including Palmetto, ACT, Omnitone, Songlines, Pirouet, High Note, Justin Time, ArtistShare, Fresh Sound, Kind of Blue, and many others.
Piano Jazz’s Marian McPartland has called him, “endlessly inventive.” Versace has a master’s degree in music performance from the Eastman School of Music, and spent eight years as a tenured associate professor in the jazz studies department at the University of Oregon. He remains active as a clinician and guest soloist both nationally and around the world.
Nasheet Waits – one of New York’s most creative drummers, deeply musical – provides the sound of surprise as well as groove in the group.
Tickets are $22 general, $20 seniors and Earshot Jazz members, $11 students, at www.brownpapertickets.com and 800-838-3006.
Brian Blade & The Fellowship Band photo by Kristian Hill
Brian Blade & The Fellowship Band
Tuesday, February 18, 7:30pm
Plestcheeff Auditorium, Seattle Art Museum
1300 First Avenue (Downtown)
Presented in association with Icons Among Us: Jazz in the Present Tense.
One of the most distinctive and versatile future legends of jazz, Brian Blade has held the dream drum chair in the Wayne Shorter Quartet since its inception. He has also played and recorded with Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, and a who’s who of jazz and pop. His enduring and ever-changing Fellowship project is a co-operative musical environment with the great composer and arranger Jon Cowherd on piano, Melvin Butler and Myron Walden on saxes, Dave Easley on pedal steel and Christopher Thomas on bass (no guitarist this tour).
Their 2010 Earshot festival concert at EMP has become one of those events that people still talk about in hushed reverence. This will be another one for the ages.
Born in Shreveport, Louisiana, Blade moved to New Orleans to study at Loyola University in 1988. At Loyola, Blade was able to study with many of the city’s great educators, including John Vidacovich, Ellis Marsalis, Steve Masakowski, and John Mahoney. It was at Loyola that Blade also befriended pianist Jon Cowherd and bassist Chris Thomas, with whom he later moved to New York City.
This trio formed the core of Blade’s Fellowship, which soon expanded to feature two reeds, electric guitar, and pedal steel guitar. With Fellowship, Blade released the eclectic Brian Blade Fellowship (1998) and Perceptual (2000) for Blue Note, and though the albums were critically acclaimed, they were not great commercial successes.
Blade’s star continued to rise, however, first in high-profile gigs with Joshua Redman and Kenny Garrett, and later with Wayne Shorter in his new quartet with John Patitucci and Danilo Perez. Blade has also gone to conquer some seemingly unlikely gigs with Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, and Seal, while winning numerous awards from major jazz and percussion publications along the way.
Blade’s volcanic dexterity and polyrhythmic power behind the drum set is one of the most exciting sounds in jazz today. Which is not to undervalue his supreme taste and musical awareness, nor his abilities as a leader. For over a decade, Fellowship has remained Blade’s primary output as a composer and leader. After a long absence from recording, the band returned in 2008 with Season of Changes, both a thrilling reminder of what the band could accomplish and a measure of how far Fellowship has come. Their next release is on the horizon – Landmarks.
In a related note, KCTS-9 has picked up the documentary film Icons Among Us, which features the Fellowship band.
Advance tickets are $24 adult, $22 seniors and Earshot Jazz members, and $12 students at www.brownpapertickets.com and 800-838-3006.
Linda Oh photo by Vincent Soyez
Linda Oh’s Sun Pictures
Sunday, March 30, 7:30pm
Plestcheeff Auditorium, Seattle Art Museum
1300 First Avenue (Downtown)
Free Linda Oh workshop, Monday, March 31, noon, Cornish College of the Arts, Poncho Concert Hall, 710 E. Roy
One of the brilliant rising stars in jazz, bassist Linda Oh dazzled Earshot Jazz Festival audiences last year in the new quintet of trumpeter Dave Douglas, on who’s Greenleaf record label she records. Her Sun Pictures (2013) quartet includes James Muller on guitar, along with other festival standouts, Ben Wendel (of Kneebody) on saxophone and Ted Poor (Cuong Vu & UW) on drums.
On this, her third CD, Oh offers a set of musical postcards from her travels across the country and around the world. In the two years since the release of her last disc, Initial Here, Oh has performed extensively, both leading her own groups, in renowned trumpeter Dave Douglas’ new quintet, and with the Sound Prints quintet co-led by Douglas and tenor saxophonist Joe Lovano.
With her debut, Entry, Oh asserted herself as a unique new voice on the modern jazz scene. Follow-up Initial Here drew deeply on her rich cultural heritage and broad range of inspirations to further define her musical autobiography.
Born in Malaysia to Chinese parents and raised in Western Australia, Oh arrived in New York with a love of jazz, early training in classical bassoon and an adolescence spent playing electric bass in Aussie rock bands. She graduated with honors from the WA Academy of Performing Arts, was a James Morrison Scholarship Finalist in 2003 and an IAJE Sister in Jazz in 2004. She received the ASCAP Young Jazz Composer’s award in 2008. She also received an honorary mention at the 2009 Thelonious Monk Bass Competition. Oh completed her master’s at the Manhattan School of Music in 2008, studying with Jay Anderson, John Riley, Phil Markowitz, Dave Liebman and Rodney Jones. She now teaches the pre-college division there and conducts jazz video conference master-classes for high-schools around the US.
Tickets are $18 adult, $16 seniors and Earshot Jazz members, $9 students at www.brownpapertickets.com and 800-838-3006.
