Earshot Jazz Festival through November 11
SITES + ADDRESSES + TICKETS
Barboza
925 E Pike St (Capitol Hill) | Tickets on sale at Moe Bar or via etix.com
Café Racer
5828 Roosevelt Way NE (Ravenna) | Free
Chapel Performance Space
Good Shepherd Center, 4649 Sunnyside Ave N (Wallingford) | Brown Paper Tickets at 1-800-838-3006 & brownpapertickets.com
EMP Museum: Level 3
325 5th Ave N (Seattle Center) | Brown Paper Tickets at 1-800-838-3006 & brownpapertickets.com
Illsley Ball Nordstrom Recital Hall at Benaroya Hall
200 University St (downtown) | 1-866-833-4747 & seattlesymphony.org
Kirkland Performance Center
350 Kirkland Ave, Kirkland | 425-893-9900 & kpcenter.org
PONCHO Concert Hall
710 E Roy St, Kerry Hall, Cornish College of the Arts (Capitol Hill) | Brown Paper Tickets at 1-800-838-3006 & brownpapertickets.com
Roosevelt Performing Arts Theater
1410 NE 66th St (Ravenna) | Brown Paper Tickets at 1-800-838-3006 & brownpapertickets.com
The Royal Room
5000 Rainier Ave S (Columbia City) | 206-906-9920 & theroyalroomseattle.com
Town Hall Seattle
1119 Eighth Ave (at Seneca, First Hill) | Brown Paper Tickets at 1-800-838-3006 & brownpapertickets.com
The Triple Door
216 Union St (beneath Wild Ginger at Third Ave, downtown) | 206-838-4333 & thetripledoor.net
Tula’s Restaurant and Jazz Club
2214 Second Ave (Belltown) | 206-443-4221 & reservations@tulas.com
Vermillion Art Gallery & Bar
1508 11th Ave (Capitol Hill) | Brown Paper Tickets at 1-800-838-3006 & brownpapertickets.com
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 1
Seattle Repertory Jazz Orchestra “Quincy & Ray on Jackson Street”
Nordstrom Recital Hall, 7:30pm
Frank Catalano Quartet
Tula’s Restaurant and Jazz Club, 7:30pm
Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey | McTuff
Royal Room, 8pm
Battle Trance
Chapel Performance Space, 8pm
SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 2
Seattle Repertory Jazz Orchestra “Quincy & Ray on Jackson Street”
Kirkland Performance Center, 2pm
Industrial Revelation | Ted Poor, Cuong Vu, Pete Rende
EMP Level 3, 7:30pm
True Blues: Corey Harris & Alvin Youngblood Hart
Triple Door, 7pm & 9:30pm
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 3
Crystal Beth & the Boom Boom Band | Trimtab
Barboza, 8pm
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 4
Seattle Women’s Jazz Orchestra featuring Grace Kelly
Triple Door, 7:30pm
Hal Galper Trio w/ Jeff Johnson & John Bishop
PONCHO Concert Hall,
Cornish College of the Arts, 8pm
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 6
Sax in the City
Various times, locations, artists
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 7
Anton Schwartz Quintet
Tula’s Restaurant and Jazz Club, 7:30pm
Pharoah Sanders Quartet
Town Hall Seattle, 8pm
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 8
Roosevelt High School
Jazz Band
Roosevelt High School Auditorium, 7:30pm
Anton Schwartz Quintet
Tula’s Restaurant and Jazz Club, 7:30pm
Bad Luck | Scott Cutshall / John Gross Duo
Vermillion Art Gallery & Bar, 8pm
SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 9
Racer Sessions +
Café Racer, 8pm
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 10
Miguel Zenón Quartet
PONCHO Concert Hall,
Cornish College of the Arts, 8pmTUESDAY, NOVEMBER 11
Earshot Jazz Festival
Wrap-up Party
Musicquarium @ Triple Door, 7:30pm
Saturday, November 1, 7:30pm | Tula’s Restaurant & Jazz Club
Frank Catalano Quartet
$18 general | $16 members & seniors | $9 students & veterans
The brawny Chicago saxophonist ranges from tempered swing to the rapid-fire energy that has won him gigs with both Santana and Ministry. On the heels of two new recordings, the rock-solid quartet lights up two evenings at Seattle’s classic jazz club.
Frank Catalano’s new Ropeadope recording debuted at #1 on the iTunes jazz sales chart. Love Supreme Collective is an homage to John Coltrane and features Jimmy Chamberlin (Smashing Pumpkins), Percy Jones (Brand X), Chris Poland (Megadeath), and Adam Benjamin (Kneebody).
Now 37, Catalano is the only known saxman to have performed with Miles Davis, Randy Brecker, Charles Earland, Elvin Jones, Stan Getz, Betty Carter, Von Freeman, Tito Puente, Tony Bennett, Les Claypool and Louis Bellson while still in high school. This led to his signing to Delmark Records at age 18 and a string of critically acclaimed recordings. including three Grammy-winning and 11 Grammy-nominated.
Saturday, November 1, 8pm | Royal Room
Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey & McTuff
$18 general | $16 members & seniors | $9 students & veterans
Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey is the acclaimed, road-sharpened trio of Brian Haas (piano/Fender Rhodes/bass Moog/synth), Chris Combs (electric guitar/lap steel guitar/synth), and Josh Raymer (drums). “It swings, it sways, but the jazz trio form in their hands has an almost primitive, inside-your-head, idiosyncratic quality” (DownBeat). While navigating 20 years, 16 members, 25 albums, and countless tours around the world, JFJO has become an institution in modern music. Defined by evolution and change, the band has invented its own language, one which permeates JFJO’s sound regardless of configuration. Beginning in Tulsa, OK, in 1994 as a funky octet with MCs and horns, JFJO became an instrumental trio in 1999, a quartet in 2007, and expanded to a 9-piece ensemble for 2011’s acclaimed Race Riot Suite. Celebrating their 20th anniversary in 2014, this year finds the band returning to the trio setting with two new albums on the revered Brooklyn record label, Royal Potato Family. In October, JFJO drops Worker, a brand new collection of songs that defy expectation.
If you want organ-centric, you can’t do much better than Seattle’s McTuff. Led by Hammond organ maestro Joe Doria, McTuff also contains one of the region’s most dexterous guitarists, Andy Coe, and drummer Tarik Abouzied. Along with Afrocop, but in a bit more of straight-ahead manner than that younger group, McTuff writes alluringly malleable tunes, redolent of soul, ablaze with technical virtuosity, and often funky.
Saturday, November 1, 8pm | Chapel Performance Space
Battle Trance
$14 general | $12 members & seniors | $7 students & veterans
What happens when you wake up one morning with the unshakable feeling that you need to start a tenor saxophone quartet with three people you barely know? If you’re Travis Laplante you don’t question the impulse, you just follow the muse. And follow it he did, as the ensemble, Battle Trance, was formed that very evening.
Laplante is joined in Battle Trance by three other leading tenor saxophonists: Matthew Nelson, Jeremy Viner, and Patrick Breiner. Described as music that not only transcends genres, but also time and space, the group’s 2014 debut recording, Palace of Wind (available on New Amsterdam Records), inhabits the cracks between contemporary classical music, avant-garde jazz, black metal, ambient, and world music. In terms of tradition, it draws on the whirling soundscapes of Evan Parker and is meant to dissolve the separation between listener and sound. Circular breathing, multiphonics, blisteringly fast lines, and unorthodox articulation meld to create hypnotic waves of sound that place the cerebral nature of composition and the visceral act of performance in a purely spiritual sonic space – one that has been described by The New York Times as “a floating tapestry of fascinating textures made up of tiny musical motifs…that throbs with tension between stillness and agitation, density and light.”
Saturday, November 1, 7:30pm | Nordstrom Recital Hall
Sunday, November 2, 2pm | Kirkland Performance Center
Seattle Repertory Jazz Orchestra
$47 general | $44 seniors | $15 under 25
Presented by Seattle Repertory Jazz Orchestra
The mighty Seattle Repertory Jazz Orchestra celebrates its 20th anniversary season with several special events and more of the well-programmed excellence that has earned critical acclaim and devoted followers. For this special jazz-festival concert, the all-star SRJO big band celebrates Seattle’s renowned jazz masters with “Quincy and Ray on Jackson Street.”
Founded in 1995, the 17-piece big band is made up of the most prominent instrumentalists, educators, and bandleaders in the Seattle area.
Directed by Michael Brockman and Clarence Acox, SRJO has become a Seattle institution. Tonight’s concert reprises material from the enormously popular “Genius + Soul = Jazz,” celebrating the meeting of Ray Charles and Quincy Jones on Seattle’s storied Jackson Street scene, and featuring favorite compositions of their collaborations into the early 60s. Seattle’s beloved vocalist Reggie Goings joins the fun, while B3 organist Delvon Lamarr rocks the sounds of Ray Charles.
Sunday, November 2, 7:30pm | EMP Level 3
Industrial Revelation
Ted Poor, Cuong Vu, Pete Rende
$18 general | $16 members & seniors | $9 students & veterans
In cooperation with EMP and Argus Fund
This year’s winner of The Stranger’s Music Genius Award, Industrial Revelation creates cross-genre, cross-generation, cross-racial, cross-economic, ever-morphing magic. The soaring amalgam of jazz, hiphop, indie rock, punk, and soul, is seamless, substantial, and enormously entertaining. The genius of this band is honest, open, and uncalculated.
The Seattle Weekly calls D’Vonne Lewis (drums), Evan Flory-Barnes (bass), Josh Rawlings (keyboards), and Ahamefule J. Oluo (trumpet) “effortlessly, constantly inventive.” Featured as one of “50 Bands Rocking Seattle Music Right Now,” Seattle magazine praised their live performance as a “sweat-inducing jam, with big horn crescendo’s, rapid bass solos, lightning strikes of keys and rolling thunder drums.” Industrial Revelation embodies the great Seattle jazz continuum; past, present, and future.
Sharing the stage tonight is a new trio featuring Ted Poor on drums, Cuong Vu on trumpet and effects, and Pete Rende on synths. The performance will be an emotive study in power and refinement, and the newest installment of a storied musical journey.
This concert, and interviews with the participating artists, will be filmed as a continuation of the polished, critically acclaimed documentary film, Icons Among Us: Jazz in the Present Tense.
Sunday, November 2, 7pm & 9:30pm | Triple Door
True Blues: Corey Harris & Alvin Youngblood Hart
$22 general | $20 members & seniors | $11 students & veterans
True Blues chronicles the extraordinary living culture of the blues in an evening of music and conversation. The True Blues concert vividly brings to life this crucial wellspring of American music.
Corey Harris, a MacArthur Award-winning Delta blues guitarist and vocalist with one foot in tradition and the other in contemporary experimentation, teams with Alvin Youngblood Hart, a Grammy-winning self-styled “cosmic love child of Howlin’ Wolf and Link Wray,” to seek out the DNA of the vast blues tradition. Blues is at the center of their artistry, and the blues takes center stage in True Blues, the concert.
Monday, November 3, 8pm | Barboza
Crystal Beth & the Boom Boom Band | Trimtab
$12 (21+)
Beth Fleenor (clarinetist/vocalist/composer) has emerged as one of the most fearless and innovative musicians in the city, and in this new combo – Tristan Gianola (guitar), Michael Owcharuk (keyboard), Paul “PK” Kemmish (bass), and Adam Kozie (drums) – she unleashes her psychoactive, euphoric, libidinous Liberation Ritual 1, the first in the series.
Trimtab is the concept of guitarist Jason Goessl, who saw an intrinsic link between architecture and musical form – a link he sought to express in sound. Initially formed in Minneapolis, Goessl moved west to Seattle and enlisted bassist Phil Cali and drummer Brian Oppel, to form the newest incarnation of Trimtab, and further realize his musical vision. Sweeping dynamic changes, woven through hypnotic musical tensions, all set against persistent grooves, the music of Trimtab is a unique blend of the concrete and the sonic, the physical and the ephemeral.
Tuesday, November 4, 7:30pm | Triple Door
Seattle Women’s Jazz Orchestra feat. Grace Kelly
$20 general | $18 members & seniors | $10 students & veterans
Presented in partnership w/ SWOJO. Supported by 4Culture.
SWOJO has been showcasing our region’s talented female jazz artists for 14 years. This evening, the ensemble welcomes special guest Grace Kelly, already a master saxophonist at 22.
The concert also features two world-premiere performances from the orchestra’s second annual competition for women jazz composers. The contest was created to encourage the composition of the highest possible quality jazz ensemble literature playable by high schools, honor bands, college bands and professional bands alike.
Jennifer Bellor of New York composed the winning piece, “Noir,” while Berklee College of Music student Jihye Lee’s “Deep Blue Sea” earned honorable mention.
Tuesday, November 4, 8pm | PONCHO Concert Hall, Cornish College of the Arts
Hal Galper Trio w/ Jeff Johnson & John Bishop
$16 general | $14 members & seniors | $8 students & veterans
Veteran bebop pianist Hal Galper, renowned since his collaborations with Chet Baker, Cannonball Adderley, and Phil Woods, joins the seasoned bass-and-drums pairing of Jeff Johnson and John Bishop for a night of what their 2006 Origin Records release of time-shifting originals and standards aptly called Furious Rubato.
A student of the piano from the age of six, Galper entered the Berklee School of Music on a scholarship in 1955. and studied technique with the famous Madam Chaloff. He quickly gravitated to the city’s jazz clubs, supplementing his formal Berklee training by studying the performances of such Boston stalwarts as Jaki Byard, Sam Rivers, and Herb Pomeroy.
Beginning his international performing career in a three-year stint with trumpeter Chet Baker, he went on to be an integral member of the bands of Cannonball Adderley and Phil Woods.
Galper is a leader not only as a performer but also as an educator, with emphasis on theory, performance and the worldly side of music as a profession. He was a founding member of New York’s New School of Jazz and Contemporary Music and recently retired from his 14-year tenure at Purchase Conservatory.
Thursday, November 6 – Various times, locations, artists
Sax in the City
One glance at this year’s Earshot festival brochure, or any jazz festival brochure, will affirm that the saxophone has become the one instrument most commonly associated with jazz. Today, the Earshot Jazz Festival celebrates the 200th birthday of the idiosyncratic Adolphe Sax, by dispatching players of his extraordinarily weird, wonderful, and nearly ubiquitous instrument, throughout the city, throughout the day and evening. Look for pop-up saxophone solos around the city; with concerted activities around Seattle Center, the UW campus, downtown and Capitol Hill music spots, office buildings, and the Pioneer Square First Thursday Art Walk.
With help from the intrepid saxophone adventurer Neil Welch, we have organized 10 site-specific, player-specific activities for the day. These will be augmented by individual music educators and institutions like the UW School of Music, Cornish College of the Arts, and Seattle JazzED.
Joining the city-wide campaign will be instrument retailers and repair shops, high-school music programs, and many individual artists. In fact, we encourage anyone with a saxophone to step outside and play your best piece so others can hear.
Details will appear under today’s heading on www.earshot.org in the immediate run up to the event. See you out there!
Friday, November 7, 8pm | Town Hall Seattle
Pharoah Sanders Quartet
$26 general | $24 members & seniors | $13 students & veterans | $36 preferred seating
With his unmistakable questing, yearning tone, this legendary saxophonist has pursued a master plan through the major turns in jazz of the last 50 years. On his early classic recordings with John Coltrane, and then recordings under his own leadership, Sanders explosively liberated jazz form and expectations, yet also embraced timeless melody and sonorities – and his intensity has never waned. His quartet includes pianist William Henderson, bassist Nat Reeves, and drummer Joe Farnsworth.
Pharoah Sanders was born into a musical family. Known in the Bay Area as “Little Rock,” Sanders soon began playing bebop, rhythm & blues, and free jazz with many of the region’s finest musicians. In 1961, Sanders moved to New York, where he struggled. Unable to make a living with his music, Sanders took to pawning his horn, working non-musical jobs, and sometimes sleeping on the subway. During this period he played with a number of free jazz luminaries, including Sun Ra and Billy Higgins.
In 1964, Coltrane asked Sanders to sit in with his band. The following year, Sanders was playing regularly with the Coltrane group. Coltrane’s ensembles with Sanders were some of the most controversial in the history of jazz. Their music represents a near total desertion of traditional jazz concepts, like swing and functional harmony, in favor of a teeming, irregularly structured, organic mixture of sound for sound’s sake. Strength was a necessity in that band, and as Coltrane realized, Sanders had it in abundance.
In the decades since, Sanders has developed into a more well-rounded artist, capable of playing convincingly in a variety of contexts, from free to mainstream. Some of his best work is his most accessible. As a mature artist, Sanders discovered a hard-edged lyricism that has served him well.
Friday, November 7 & Saturday, November 8, 7:30pm Tula’s Restaurant & Jazz Club
Anton Schwartz Quintet
$16 general | $14 members & seniors | $8 students & veterans
Anton Schwartz creates brainy jazz that also thrills with “upbeat vibe, strong melodies, and unflagging sense of swing” (Jazziz). No less a master than Illinois Jacquet has said of Schwartz: “You play the tenor sax like it’s meant to be played.” He performs the music of his much radio-played Flashmob with George Colligan (piano), Lorca Hart (drums), Thomas Marriott (trumpet), and Jon Hamar (bass).
Since 1995, Anton Schwartz has gained an enthusiastic following, as fans respond to what the San Francisco Chronicle calls his “warm, generous tone, impeccably developed solos and infectious performance energy.” Over the years, Anton has won over listeners and critics at high-profile jazz venues across the country. He recently performed an hour-long concert of unaccompanied saxophone at the San Francisco Jazz Festival (2013) and at Boston Symphony Hall as a featured soloist with the Boston Pops (2014).
Schwartz is a longtime faculty member of The Jazzschool and Stanford Jazz Workshop, a clinician at the Brubeck Institute, and has been artist-in-residence at Harvard University and the Brubeck Institute Summer Jazz Colony.
Saturday, November 8, 7:30pm | Roosevelt High School Auditorium
Roosevelt High School Jazz Band
$16 general | $14 members & seniors | $8 students & veterans | free for 12 & under
Every year under the direction of Scott Brown, the Roosevelt students turn out impressively stylish and assured performances. Often finishing at or near the top of the prestigious Essentially Ellington competition in New York, Roosevelt Jazz has helped to define the excellence of Seattle jazz education and set a standard for high-school jazz orchestras nationwide.
Since 1969, the Roosevelt Jazz Program has engaged high school students in the artistry of jazz. Under the direction first of Waldo King, and now Brown, Roosevelt Jazz has matured into one of the nation’s most accomplished programs, advancing this uniquely American art form. Over the years, the Jazz Band has competed nationally in New York and Philadelphia and performed internationally in such diverse venues as Montreux, Switzerland; Beijing, China; and Mazatlan, Mexico. All of the program’s ensembles – Jazz Bands I, II, and III, and Vocal Jazz – also feature in regional jazz festivals.
Saturday, November 8, 8pm | Vermillion Art Gallery & Bar
Bad Luck | Scott Cutshall / John Gross Duo
$5-15 sliding scale
This summer, the world lost Charlie Haden, one of the true monsters, mentors, and masters of jazz. Haden once said, “Before music there was silence, and the duet format lets you build from that silence in a very special way.” November 8 will be a testament to those words as Bad Luck and John Gross & Scott Cutshall explore the sonic territory surrounding the silence.
Bad Luck, the duo of Chris Icasiano (drums) and Neil Welch (saxophone), are Seattle mainstays whose sound has gained the attention of All About Jazz and the New York Jazz Record. Described as “powerful and virtuosic” and “hard-edged and audacious,” Icasiano’s demanding drums and Welch’s waves of sound traverse from the bombastic to the wandering, creating an impressively diverse dynamic and sonic pallet for two instrumentalists.
Legendary saxophonist John Gross and drummer Scott Cutshall, who perform as part of the John Gross Trio, will be making the trip up from Portland to present their determined yet introspective improvisational explorations. Gross is heralded for his calm delivery and convincing ideas on the saxophone, and has been touted as one of the most significant players on the scene by the Saxophone Journal. Gross’s serenity creates a sharp contrast with Cutshall’s dry and feverish drumming, but forges a dynamic that is invigorating and pulsating with life. From the silence, both duos are sure to build tremendous and exceptional impressions of sound.
Sunday, November 9, 8pm | Café Racer
Racer Sessions +
Free
For several years, weekly curated sessions at this celebrated U District location have challenged and nurtured Seattle improvising musicians. To mark the mighty contribution of the gatherings, organizer and drummer Chris Icasiano produces this expanded jazz-festival edition.
Under the Seattle record label Table & Chairs, the Racer Sessions give musicians of all backgrounds and ages the opportunity to interact with and inspire one another, while establishing a community-accessible home for this music, which might otherwise only exist in classrooms, basements, outer space, etc.
Monday, November 10, 8pm | PONCHO Concert Hall Cornish College of the Arts
Miguel Zenón Quartet
$22 general | $20 members & seniors | $11 students & veterans
The Puerto Rican alto-sax phenom, whose brilliant playing and cultural integration won him a MacArthur Fellowship, performs with his explosive quartet of Luis Perdomo, piano; Hans Glawischnig, bass; and Eric Doob, drums. Expect intricate, soulful, intense, and locked-in playing that resonates with strains from throughout the Latin and forward-moving jazz worlds.
Multiple Grammy nominee and Guggenheim and MacArthur fellow Zenón is one of a select group of musicians who have masterfully balanced and blended the often contradictory poles of innovation and tradition. Widely considered one of the most groundbreaking and influential saxophonists of his generation, he has also developed a unique voice as a composer and as a conceptualist, concentrating his efforts on perfecting a fine mix between Latin American folkloric music and jazz.
Born and raised in San Juan, Puerto Rico, Zenón has released seven recordings as a leader. As a sideman he has worked with jazz luminaries such as the SFJAZZ Collective, the Mingus Big Band, Fred Hersch, Kenny Werner, and Steve Coleman. Zenón has topped the Rising Star Alto Sax category of the DownBeat critics’ poll on four different occasions. As a composer he has been commissioned by SFJAZZ, the New York State Council for the Arts, Chamber Music America, the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, and many of his peers. Zenón is a permanent faculty member at the New England Conservatory of Music. In 2011, he founded Caravana Cultural, a program which presents free jazz concerts in rural areas of Puerto Rico.
Tuesday, November 11, 7:30pm | Musicquarium @ Triple Door
Earshot Jazz Festival Wrap-up Party
Free
Join everyone who put on the Earshot Jazz festival, as well as musicians and your fellow fans, at this closing party and celebration.
With lots of gratitude and live jazz accompaniment.
