Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Pamela Wise was born on January 8, 1956 in Steubenville, Ohio. She began composing and playing piano by ear at age five and started lessosn at nine. After studying the basics she began playing for her church choir, directed by her bassist father. While in high school she formed Ohio Movement, a r&b group performing throughout the Midwest and East Coast. Eight years later she left the band and moved to Cleveland, Ohio with her brother and entered Cuyahoga Community College to further study music.
A move to Detroit, Michigan with her brother led her to play with several r&b groups in the Detroit area, meeting her future husband Wendell Harrison and eventually composing and performing for Freddie Hubbard, Woody Shaw, Leon Thomas and Eddie Harris. In 1989 she formed a group that enlisted James Carter, Dwight Adams, Jaribu Shahid, Ali Muhammad and Andrew Daniels.
Pamela has collaborated with Regina Carter, Akua Dixon Turre, and with Jerry Gonzalez produced her cd Songo Festividad. She went on to release A New Message From The Tribe, Kindred Spirits, Negre Con Leche, and Pamela’s Club projects.
Composer, pianist and music director Pamela Wise continues to perform, record, collaborate and educate.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Jon Larsen was born on January 7, 1959 in Bærum, Norway and when he was in his early teens he learned rock and soul songs on an acoustic steel-string guitar. Through friends, he learned about blues, jazz, flamenco, and classical guitar. After he heard Tears by Django Reinhardt on the radio, he decided that this is how he wanted his guitar to sound. At seventeen he formed a string trio and had his first professional job.
The 1970s Jon worked mainly as a painter until 1980 when he started the Hot Club de Norvege with guitarists Per Frydenlund and bassist Svein Aarbostad. They had a hit record when they performed with pop singer Lillebjørn Nilsen. He has worked with Chet Baker, Philip Catherine, Stéphane Grappelli, Warne Marsh, Biréli Lagrène, Babik Reinhardt and Jimmy Rosenberg. He has produced more than 450 jazz records for the label he founded, Hot Club Records.
He has led a group of musicians who played with Zappa and started the label Zonic Entertainment to record musicians who played with him .including Arthur Barrow, Jimmy Carl Black, Bruce Fowler, Bunk Gardner, Tommy Mars, and Don Preston.
A documentary Symphonic Django was released in 2008 about Larsen and guitar virtuoso Jimmy Rosenberg titled Jon & Jimmy, and appeared in the documentary film Fireball: Visitors from Darker Worlds In 2012.
Gypsy jazz guitarist, record producer, painter, and amateur scientific researcher Jon Larsen, who founded the group Hot Club de Norvège and received the Buddy Award for his lifelong contribution to jazz, continues to perform, record and produce.
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OSCAR PEÑAS
Catalan- North american guitarist Oscar Peñas uses his unique skills to arrange, produce, and perform innovative compositions crossing jazz and classical genres, using non-traditional instrumentation in either style, outlining his arrangements and unique sound. Peñas was born in Barcelona, living in the states since 2005. His family loved traditional, folk, and flamenco music. His maternal grandfather was a trumpet player who occasionally played with Xavier Cugat’s orchestra in town.
Peñas’ first studies were devoted to classical music; he later developed a fascination with jazz and dedicated his career to the American genre. His decision led to this moment in his musical career, a road that crosses cultures and creative ideas, the primary genre melded by different grooves.
Peñas has expanded his focus to incorporate diverse rhythms and styles, creating extraordinary musical experiences that enrich lives and empower individuals through collaboration, innovation, and a passion for artistic excellence. His intuition and ear drive him to an amalgam of melodies that aim for the unexpected and merge multiple music styles that do not cohere into a single signature style.
As a performer, Peñas has released six albums as bandleader, composer, and performer; four albums in the USA under his own label Musikoz, and two in Barcelona, published by Fresh Sound New Talents. His collaborations with great American Jazz Master include; Grammy winners Esperanza Spalding, Gil Goldstein, Paquito D’Rivera, legendary bassist Ron Carter, Mike Stern, and pedal steel guitar Greg Leisz.
Cover: $38.56~$51.00
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ANN HAMPTON CALLAWAY
The Best of Ann Hampton Callaway, the new show by the Tony nominated singer-songwriter. With her trio led by Grammy-winner Billy Stritch, Callaway dazzles us with highlights from her hit shows The Streisand Songbook, Ann Hampton Callaway Sings the ‘70s, The Linda Ronstadt Songbook, To Ella with Love, From Sassy to Divine: The Sarah Vaughan Project, and Finding Beauty: Inspired Classics and Originals. Come see why Christopher Loudon of Jazz Times calls her the “…superbly intelligent, singularly creative pop-jazz stylist who can stand shoulder to shoulder with the likes of Streisand, Ronstadt, Shirley Horn, and Dianne Reeves…”
Joined by: Tim Horner on drums, Martin Wind on bass
Cover: $56.50~$62.00
Streaming: $28.50
Additional food & beverage minimum of $25 per person.
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FROM NEW YORK: NICK HEMPTON QUARTET CD RELEASE
In the summer of 2024, Hempton made one of his regular visits to Vancouver to reunite with his very soulful co-conspirators Jesse Cahill and Nick Peck for a weekend at Frankie’s, the city’s legendary jazz club. After some cajoling, Van City tenor legend Cory Weeds agreed to join on stage to form a two-horn quartet. Mics were set up, favourite tunes were chosen, cocktails were consumed; and with the Frankie’s crowd in fine fettle, urging us on with stomps and hollers, we laid down a set of hard-driving soul jazz.
In between shows, to balance the live feel, the cats descended into the murky shadows of a grungy basement studio, the carpeted walls dripping with years of accumulated funk. In keeping with the free blowing feel of the club gig, the studio session took place live, with no isolation and no safety net; and in the subterranean twilight the quartet knocked out a set of swingers in a couple of hours, each tune needing only one or two takes.
Weeds and Hempton are long-time friends and mutual admirers, and it was a gas to engage in a little sporting, good-natured combat, tipping their hats to the great two-tenor matchups of the past: Dexter Gordon and Herschel Evans, Gene Ammons and Sonny Stitt, Johnny Griffin and Lockjaw Davis. And while they were wailing, Peck & Cahill were getting down to serious business, lighting the fire and keeping it burning until the last note faded.
Celebrate the release of their new cd Horns Locked!
The Band: Nick Hempton~tenor sax, Cory Weeds~tenor sax, Nick Peck~organ and Jesse Cahill~drums
Cover: Sold Out | Both Shows
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