The Jazz Voyager

The Jazz Voyager is heading to Logan Airport in Beantown for a summer experience at the famous Scullers Jazz Club that has been a jazz landmark in the city since its founding in 1989. Led by jazz impresario Fred Taylor, the 200-seat club offers spectacular views of Boston’s skyline and the Charles River that serve as the perfect backdrop for world-class entertainment you won’t see anywhere else in Boston.

This week I’ll be enjoying NEA Jazz Master saxophonist Kenny Garrett. His illustrious career includes hallmark stints with Miles Davis, Art Blakey and The Jazz Messengers, Donald Byrd, Freddie Hubbard, Woody Shaw and the Duke Ellington Orchestra. With a heralded career as a solo artist of more than 30 years ago, he is easily recognized as one of modern jazz’s brightest and most influential living masters.

The venue is located on the ground floor of the DoubleTree Suites at 400 Soldiers Field Road, MA 02134. More information can be obtained by calling 617-747-2261 or by visiting scullersjazz.com.

CALIFORNIA JAZZ FOUNDATION

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TATIANA EVA-MARIE & AVALON JAZZ BAND

Tatiana Eva-Marie, is a Brooklyn-based singer and bandleader. Born and raised in Europe in a professional musical family, a Swiss-French composer and a Romanian classical violinist, Tatiana Eva-Marie grew up equally fascinated by her father’s New Orleans jazz records, and her mother’s heritage of Klezmer and Gypsy folk music.

Nicknamed “the Gypsy-jazz Warbler” by the New York Times and acclaimed as a “millennial shaking up the jazz scene” by magazine Vanity Fair, Tatiana Eva-Marie returns to explore the music of composer Django Reinhardt through her own original arrangements and lyrics in her latest project “Djangology”, a tribute inspired by her French and Romanian Gypsy heritage and her love for the Parisian art scene of the 1920s to the 1960s.

Acclaimed by such publications as the Wall Street Journal and the NY Times, and Tatiana performs regularly in New York City, and around the world, with performances at The New Orleans Jazz Festival, Jazz Aspen SnowMass, SummerStage NY, Riverboat Jazz Festival (Denmark), Bahrein Jazz Festival, Le Méridien (Paris), Tanzcafe Arlberg (Austria), Jazz aux Sources Festival (France), Le Bal Blomet (Paris), Cully Jazz Festival (Switzerland), Lincoln Center’s Midsummer Night Swing, Deva Jazz Festival (Romania) and Jazz at Lincoln Center.

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VANESSA RUBIN QUARTET

New York City vocalist extraordinaire and 2020 NAACP Image Awards nominee makes a one-night-only return.

Vanessa’s journey to becoming a jazz singer could be said to have begun at an early age. She was characterized by her mother as always being “a very vocal child,” and knew Vanessa would, “do something with that big ol’ mouth of hers.” Coming from parents who valued academia, discipline and hard work, that “something” was meant to be law school. Attaining a BA from the The Ohio State School of Journalism in 1979 was not a disappointment. However, her decision to pursue a career jazz singing did come as a surprise. Vanessa’s fascination with language coupled with her passion for music, especially jazz, pointed her on a collision course toward jazz performance.

Her “a-ha” moment came during a college beauty pageant at which Vanessa was accompanied by a very young, and even then, a very capable Bobby Floyd of Columbus, Ohio. Her first performance of a jazz evergreen, the Billie Holiday original “God Bless The Child,” garnered both rousing applause and the winning talent award. Most importantly though, it awakened what Vanessa describes as “her calling.” “I fell in love with the moment, the music, the audience and the effect it had on them and me,” Rubin remembers.

Vanessa’s first gigs began around 1980 in small clubs around Cleveland such as Tucker’s Place, Bob’s Toast of the Town, Lancer’s Steak House, Club Isabella, The Native Son and The Teal Lounge. Some early band mates included Wynn Bibbs, Skip Gibson, saxophonist and arranger Willie Smith, Neal Creque, Matthew “Chink” Stevenson and, later, the uniquely soulful organ quartet of The Blackshaw Brothers with Cecil Rucker on vibes. “We worked 8 days a week all over Cleveland catching the tail end of what was left over from the good old days,” Rubin recalls. After two years, Rubin was anxious to set her sights on New York where she earnestly and humbly soaked up the tutelage of many veterans like Pharaoh Sanders, Frank Foster and Barry Harris.

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KATHY KOSINS QUARTET

A singular sound in the vocal world, Kosins exemplifies the intersection of jazz and soul. In 2022, Kosins earned several top nominations for her duet with Frank McComb, “I Gotta Pinch Myself”, featuring Najee. The song was nominated in the Song of the Year category at the SoulTracks Readers Choice Awards. She also played to sold-out audiences in Istanbul and the UK. Her latest single with renowned pianist, composer, and producer Bob Baldwin, “Let’s Rewind”, earned her another Number One Spot on the Smooth Jazz charts, the UK Soul Chart Top 30 and the Indie Soul Chart Top 30.

2023 has exciting news for all discerning soul jazz fans: new material with Paul Randolph and the legendary Al Hudson will end up on an EP, due in the first quarter of the new year. And Kosins will also release several tracks she wrote during the making of her now-classic “Uncovered Soul” and its aftermath. Lookout also for more tour dates at home and abroad. Steeped in the jazz tradition as well as all of the energy and intensity of soul, Kosins’s most recent album release, Uncovered Soul, was the natural next step in her prolific career.

After successful engagements at the 2019 Blue Note at Sea Cruise and Blue Note Beijing, the Exit Zero Jazz Festival, a supporting performance for Gregory Porter in Atlanta, an appearance at The Bach Dancing & Dynamite Society’s famed winter jazz series, Detroit Vocalist and ASCAP Award Winning composer Kathy Kosins is thrilled to celebrate the two year-long success that her sixth studio album, Uncovered Soul has gained across commercial radio. The driving, funk-tinged track “Put the Voodoo on Me,” is Kosins’s 4th consecutive Top 20 Smooth Jazz Single and topped the Indie Soul Chart at #1.

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DEMETRIUS NABORS

Pianist, composer, producer and arranger Demetrius “Krayon” Nabors is well known and in demand in the Detroit area and on the national contemporary jazz scene. He is a two-time Detroit Music Award Winner in the Outstanding Gospel/Christian Musician category.

His considerable talents caught the attention of numerous high-profile national artists, including R&B singer KEM, flutist Althea Rene, guitarist Tim Bowman and trumpeter Willie Bradley.Demetrius’ productions for these artists have garnered Billboard chart successes: #1 for KEM’s single “Nobody” (2014), #2 for Willie Bradley’s “It’s On Now” (2020) and #5 for Althea Rene’s “Barbara Mae” (2019). In addition, “Nobody” was nominated for the Best Traditional R&B Performance at the 57th Grammy Awards in 2014. Demetrius’ discography includes four critically acclaimed releases, “The Journey Within Part I” (2011), “Christmas with Krayon” (2012), “The Journey Within Part II” (2014) and “Perseverance” (2021). His latest, “Evolution” is set to be released in September of 2022 and was inspired by his graduate studies at the University of Michigan.

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