Starting his week as Resident Artistic Director in grand style, Kenny Barron performs with his ironclad working trio with bassist Kiyoshi Kitagawa and drummer Johnathan Blake. Kitagawa’s 27-year association with Barron and Blake’s nearly twenty-year tenure have made them the finest working piano trio in jazz, a unit that has developed a singular depth of communication as captured on Barron’s 2016 Impulse! album Book of Intuition — a sterling session nominated for “Best Instrumental Jazz Recording” at the 2016 GRAMMY Awards.
Called “one of the top jazz pianists in the world” by The Los Angeles Times, Kenny Barron is a 2010 NEA Jazz Master and eleven-time GRAMMY nominee who helped define and extend the jazz tradition since his work with Dizzy Gillespie in the early ‘60s catapulted him into the spotlight. Extensive associations with Freddie Hubbard, Yusef Lateef, Stan Getz, James Moody and Ron Carter built his peerless reputation as a sideman, and he has recorded over 50 albums as a bandleader over his five-decade career. A seven-time recipient of Best Pianst by the Jazz Journalists Association, Barron leads an ironclad trio with bassist Kiyoshi Kitagawa and drummer Johnathan Blake, and regularly performs as a soloist and settings from duo to big band.