The Jazz Voyager

Criss-crossing the country once again, the Jazz Voyager is on a six hour flight to that Golden Gate city where many a heart has been left. This trip will be to honor the seventy year career of the extraordinary vocalist Patti Austin and her contributions to the music industry that began on the Apollo stage at the age of four.

The fun will be had when all congregate in the Miner Auditorium of the SFJazz Center for this gala tribute. Opened in 2013, the center is located in the heart of the city’s arts district, and includes two performance spaces, multiple music practice rooms, a digital lab, and the B-Side restaurant and bar.

This evening will feature performances not only by the honoree but by Terence Blanchard, PJ Morton, Brian Stokes Mitchell, Siedah Garrett, Dumpstaphunk, SFJAZZ Collective, and more.

The center is located at 201 Franklin Street, San Francisco, CA 94102. For tickets and more info go to https://notoriousjazz.com/event/patti-austin.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Diego Maroto was born in Mexico City, Mexico  on May 9, 1968. He started taking private saxophone lessons in 1985 from teachers Larry Roussell and Alfonso Martínez. Two years later he studied art history at the Universidad Iberoamericana and in 1988 he joined the jazz worksop at the Escuela Superior de Música (INBA), where he learned improvisation, arrangement and composition by Francisco Tellez. His continuing education took him to private lessons from Danny Matusack and Darryl Winsman.

In 1991, Diego became an active member of the International Association of Jazz Educators (IAJE). During this period he participated in  worksops and courses with David Liebman, Ernie Watts, Arturo Sandoval, Brian Bromberg, David Baker, Jerry Bergonzi, Ran Blake, Mike Campbell, Bill Dobbins, Andy Laverne, Don Sickler and Chris Vandala.

He has recorded and performed on projects with some of Mexico’s top jazz musicians like Eugenio Toussaint, Agustin Bernal, Enrique Neri, Fernando Toussaint, Cristobal López, Chilo Moran, Miguel Salas, Francisco Téllez, Iraida Noriega, and Big Band Arte 01, to name a few.  In 2004, Maroto recorded his debut solo album Mundo Paralelo. He has performed at Dizzy’s in New York, and has shared stages with Antonio Sanchez, George Duke and Stanley Clarke. He has since formed the Diego Moaroto Asian Trio, and recorded a live album in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia at the No Black Tie jazz club.

As an educator, Diego has given lessons, clinics and seminars in important schools and institutions in Mexico. Tenor saxophonist Diego Maroto continues to perform, record, tour and teach.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Leah Souza was born in Plymouth, Massachusetts on May 8, 1982 and began singing at a very early age. She started performing at functions and outdoor concerts when she was thirteen. At 16, she was the lead vocalist of a seven piece band that was selected in a national talent search to perform in California. In high school she was the jazz band’s featured vocalist and played the tenor saxophone in multiple bands. She got her big break nationally singing on a song with her flugelhornist father, appropriately titled A Song for My Father.

Leah studied with jazz singer and vocal coach Rebecca Parris while in high school. For several years she regularly attended a Jazz All-Stars show at “Ricky T’s Jazz Club” on the South Shore. There she listened to the top jazz musicians in New England on a weekly basis and eventually began sitting in with the different All-Star bands. Studying these musicians helped her develop as a musician herself, as well as, the opportunity to meet and perform with many wonderful and often legendary performers.

She crafts her duo, trio, quartet or quintet to the venue she is playing with performances that may be lively and exciting, or romantic and full of standard ballads. Souza has performed at the cream-of-the- crop venues in Boston, Massachusetts and throughout New England.

Vocalist Leah Souza continues to pursue her burgeoning career as she expands her reach.

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Jazz Poems

DARK TO THEMSELVES

Invent, experiment–Jazz

that doesn’t swing but dances tight

as a drumhead so taut it might

explode: whole notes cleaved

into sixteenths with a single blow, melodies

recoded as arpeggios. Say, what he calls this 

composition? Tiny fingers divining

an architectonic flow, forearms jacking

cracks in the keyboard as wire

and wood cry out in agony:

duo follow, ringing changes.

Liberate the dissonance without killing

the blues. Unit structure cut it.

They don’t teach this joint in the Conservatory.

Varèse via Jelly Roll, serial Waller,

harmony ribbons in a Möbius strip. Recut it.

Enough is enough. Brother can’t play

here again, the customers ain’t paying.

Even Miles was giggling in the darkness.

It’s always a bitch to be out

front. He summons the bassline

of his thoughts in the shadows, tracing a new theory

of silence. Don’t worry about the next gig.

Their ears are still learning.

JOHN KEENE 

from Jazz Poems ~ Selected and Edited by Kevin Young

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Vic Berton was born Victor Cohen on May 7, 1896 in Chicago, Illinois. His father was a violinist who began his son on string instruments around age five. He was hired as a percussionist at the Alhambra Theater in Milwaukee, Wisconsin in 1903 when he was only seven years old. By 16, he was playing with the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. While serving in World War I he played drums for John Philip Sousa’s Navy band.

In the early 1920s, Berton played in the Chicago bands of Art Kahn, Paul Beise, and Arnold Johnson. He led his own ensemble which played at the Merry Gardens club. 1924 saw him become the manager of The Wolverines, and occasionally played alongside Bix Beiderbecke in the ensemble. Later in the decade, he played with Roger Wolfe Kahn, Don Voorhees, Red Nichols and Paul Whiteman. He worked extensively as a session musicianbefore moving to Los Angeles, California in 1927.

During his time in Los Angeles he played with Abe Lyman and recorded in studios for film soundtracks. Vic served as director of Paramount Films’s music division for a period and worked in the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra. In the 1940s, he worked as a percussionist in the studios for 20th Century Fox.

Drummer Vic Berton died on December 26, 1951 in Hollywood, California from lung cancer.

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