SHELLY BERG TRIO
Renowned pianist Shelly Berg, along with bassist Carlos Del Puerto and the talented Max Marsillo on drums, will present their latest album, “Alegria.”
Shelly Berg, a jazz luminary and Dean of the Frost School of Music, has made significant contributions to the genre. Del Puerto, with a remarkable resume including collaborations with Quincy Jones and Herbie Hancock, joins the trio alongside the prodigious Max Marsillo. Don’t miss this magical evening of exceptional music!
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DEE DEE BRIDGEWATER
NEA Jazz Master, Multi-Grammy, Tony Award-winning jazz vocalist Dee Dee Bridgewater puts her unique spin on standards, as well as re-envisions jazz classics.
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WCLK AT 50 | LIL JOHN & HIS ALL-STAR BAND
To celebrate WCLK 91.9’s 50th Anniversary the Atlanta Jazz Festival is presenting WCLK At 50: Featuring Lil John Roberts with an Atlanta All-Star Band.
Award-winning drummer Lil John Roberts will lead an Atlanta All-Star Band including these outstanding musicians: Phil Davis, Rodney Edge, Tres Gilbert, Derek Scott, Miguel Gaeten, Melvin Jones, Joe Gransden, Kebbi Williams, Jamel Mitchell, Mike Burton, Saunders Sermons, and Daniel Wytanis.
There will be special guest performances by Kathleen Bertrand, Cleveland Jones, Rhonda Thomas, Imani Grace-Cooper, Julie Dexter, Tony Hightower, Dashill Smith, and Alexandra Jackson.
As the Narrator, Jon Goode will weave in stories about the history and legacy of WCLK. Lil John Robert serves as the concert’s Music Director. The event is Co-Produced by Jamal Ahmad, Lil John Roberts, and Ray Cornelius.
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VIJAY IYER
Composer-pianist Vijay Iyer has carved out a unique path as an influential, shape-shifting presence in 21st-century music. His deeply interactive, powerfully expressive musical language is indebted to the composer-pianist lineage from Duke Ellington and Thelonious Monk to Alice Coltrane and Geri Allen, the creative music movement of the 60s and 70s, and rhythmic traditions of South Asia and West Africa. As MinnPost recently observed, “twining composition and improvisation is rightfully his most celebrated métier.” He has released twenty-six widely praised albums; received three Grammy nominations, numerous national and international prizes, and a MacArthur Fellowship; composed for orchestras, soloists, and chamber ensembles; and collaborated with poets, filmmakers, choreographers, and music-makers from across the planet.
Iyer’s artistry finds perhaps its purest expression in his most celebrated group, the Vijay Iyer Trio, praised by NPR as “truly astonishing” and by The New York Times as “one of the best bands in jazz.” Iyer’s ever-evolving trio conception, developed over the last 30 years, finds inspiration in the trio music of Ahmad Jamal, the Ellington/Mingus/Roach summit Money Jungle, Andrew Hill’s Smokestack, McCoy Tyner’s 1970s ensembles, the rhythm-section alchemies of James Brown, Fela Kuti, and the Meters, South Asian rhythmic forms, and the expressive nuance of chamber music. The results, over the span of his trio’s five pivotal recordings and hundreds of performances, have not only defied the old categories, but inaugurated entirely new ones.
The Trio: Piano: Vijay Iyer | Bass: Harish Raghavan | Drums: Jeremy Dutton
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JACKY TERRASSON
Jacky Terrasson, the most widely traveled of all jazz pianists, is the “piano player of happiness,” according to Telerama magazine in France. He is an exhilarating musician, one of those who play their public straight to euphoria. Born in Berlin, of an American mother and a French father, he grew up in Paris, France. He moved to America to study at Berklee College of Music, and in 1993, after winning the prestigious Thelonious Monk Award, he began touring with Betty Carter. He then decided to move to New York, where he still lives today.
One year later, Jacky was introduced in the New York Times Magazine as one of the 30 under 30 and signed with the Blue Note label. He made three initial trio recordings for Blue Note (Jacky Terrasson, Reach, and Alive). He then devoted himself to several collaborations: “Rendezvous”, with Cassandra Wilson, and “What it is”, with Michael Brecker and Mino Cinelu. Beginning in 2001, he recorded “A Paris” for Blue Note; a very personal interpretation of classics of French song “Smile,” (winning him Best Jazz Album of the Year); and finally a solo album, “Mirror.”
This Franco-American national has never stopped dazzling us, either by his prestigious collaborations with greats such as Dee Dee Bridgewater and Dianne Reeves, or with his minimalist and energetic music hammered out with drummer Leon Parker and bassist Ugonna Okegwo, in a trio that was considered one of the best jazz trios of the 90s. And this intuition, this instinct, this openness, leads him to the discovery of the great burgeoning talents of his many groups.
Terrasson has been compared to Bud Powell for his carefully controlled velocity on the piano keys and to Ahmad Jamal for his sense of phrasing. Jacky also possesses a deep knowledge of the great French composers savants, such as Ravel, Fauré and Debussy. Through his fingers, as he mingles and melts the colors and the inventions of the great pianists of yesterday and today, Jacky creates his own style, all in subtleties, freshness, facility and ease, with the desire to rewrite and reinvent, again, every day and forever.
In 2019, Jacky released “53,” a trio album (his favorite format), on Blue Note.
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