STANLEY CLARKE
NEA Jazz Master and four-time Grammy Award Winner Stanley Clarke has attained “living legend” status during his over 50-year career as a bass virtuoso. He is the first bassist in history who doubles on acoustic and electric bass with equal ferocity and the first jazz-fusion bassist ever to headline tours, selling out shows worldwide. A veteran of over 40 albums, he won the 2011 Best Contemporary Jazz Album Grammy Award for The Stanley Clarke Band. Clarke co-founded the seminal fusion group Return to Forever with Chick Corea and Lenny White. In 2012 Return to Forever won a Grammy Award and Latin Grammy for Best Jazz Instrumental Album, Forever.
Clarke’s creativity has been recognized and rewarded in every way imaginable: gold and platinum records, Grammy Awards, Emmy nominations, virtually every readers and critics poll in existence, and more. In 2022 Clarke was selected by the National Endowment for the Arts as one of its four new Jazz Master honorees. He also was Rolling Stone’s very first Jazzman of the Year and bassist winner of Playboy’s Music Award for ten straight years. Clarke was honored with Bass Player Magazine’s Lifetime Achievement Award and is a member of Guitar Player Magazine’s “Gallery of Greats.” In 2004 he was featured in Los Angeles Magazine as one of the Top 50 Most Influential People. He was honored with the key to the city of Philadelphia and put his hands in cement as a 1999 inductee into Hollywood’s “Rock Walk” on Sunset Boulevard. In 2011 he was honored with the highly prestigious Miles Davis Award at the Montreal Jazz Festival for his entire body of work. Clarke has won Downbeat Magazine’s Reader’s and Critics Poll for Best Electric Bass Player for many years. In September 2016 he became a part of the permanent collection displayed at the Smithsonian’s new National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) in Washington DC.
Unable to tour most of 2020, Clarke’s Pandemic work has involved developing his web series, Stanley Clarke’s Bass Nation. The series premiered November 2020. The project is about the dynamics of the music industry, recording and performing, and includes Stanley’s conversations with noted musicians, gear reviews, play-throughs and performances.
Born in Philadelphia, Clarke has been a constant force of nature in American music since the early 1970s with the success of the jazz-fusion group Return To Forever. That accomplishment gave way to a number of extremely successful solo albums for Clarke. Along the way, he has collaborated with Quincy Jones, Stan Getz, Art Blakey, Paul McCartney, Jeff Beck, Keith Richards, Aretha Franklin, Stevie Wonder, Chaka Khan, The Police, Herbie Hancock and many more, and has shared the stage with Bob Marley and Miles Davis.
Clarke heads his own record label, Roxboro Entertainment Group. Five artists were chosen for its first releases; Lloyd Gregory, Sunnie Paxson, Ruslan Sirota, Kennard Ramsey and piano prodigy Beka Gochiashvili Tbilisi, Republic of Georgia. It will soon be releasing singer Natasha Agrama’s CD, The Heart of Infinite Change
Clarke believes in giving back to help young musicians hone their skills. He and his wife Sofia established The Stanley Clarke Foundation seventeen years ago as a charitable organization, which offers scholarships to talented young musicians.
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MADELEINE PEYROUX
ALL PERFORMANCES SOLD OUT
Much like songbird Edith Piaf, Madeleine Peyroux spent her teenage years busking the busy streets of Paris. Just like the ‘little sparrow’, Madeleine befriended the city’s street musicians and made its Latin quarter her first performing stage. Years later, Peyroux would cite iconic Piaf as an influence on her music and record a rendition of the classic “La Vie En Rose,” soulfully capturing the tune’s romanticism and melancholy. Her breakthrough album Dreamland (1996) sold a striking 200,000 copies and Madeleine’s dusky voice was likened to that of jazz greats Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald.
The album cemented Madeleine Peyroux as a ‘classic’ musical talent that was here to stay, and the soulful singer found herself touring the world, singing with the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra and opening for Cesaria Evora. Extensive touring took its toll on Madeleine’s voice and Jazz’s new star failed to complete recording sessions for her second Atlantic record. Unable to “make money without singing”, Madeleine made several futile attempts at odd jobs, and soon “went into hibernation”.
In 2003 she signed to Rounder Records and embarked on a game-changing, lifelong collaboration with multi-Grammy winning producer Larry Klein (Joni Mitchell, Walter Becker, Herbie Hancock). The prolific partnership has now spanned many years and created universally acclaimed albums, hailed by many as timeless classics including: Careless Love (2004), Half the Perfect World (2006), Bare Bones (2009), her first try at an album of entirely new compositions, Standing On the Rooftop (2011), and The Blue Room,(2013).
She self-produced her next album, Secular Hymns, (2016), recorded live at a church in Oxfordshire, England. A collaboration with her touring trio, guitarist Jon Herington (Steely Dan) and bassist Barak Mori (Avishai Cohen) the album features an eclectic mix of Jazz, soul, dub and blues, with covers of Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Townes Van Zandt and Willie Dixon.
In 2019, Madeleine released Anthem, – reflecting on the contemporary political conversation, Anthem featured all new songs (excepting the title track by Leonard Cohen), co-written with Larry Klein, guitarist and lyricist David Baerwald, organist Patrick Warren and drummer Brian MacLeod.
Thirty years after her formative busking days Peyroux is the proud curator of nine beguiling albums and an accomplished performer with sell out worldwide tours under her belt. Her atmospheric version of Serge Gainsborough’s La Javanaise was used in the soundtrack of Oscar Winner The Shape of Water and her countless accolades include the coveted BBC “International Artist of The Year” honor.
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OMAR SOSA
Quarteto Americanos is Omar Sosa’s first U.S.-based jazz ensemble since the 1990s! The group came together in February 2021 when Omar was in the Bay Area for several live streams. Connecting with Josh and Sheldon was a gratifying reunion for Omar, as he played extensively with them during his early days in San Francisco and Oakland in the late 1990s. Josh Jones’ Trio at the time, including Omar and bassist Geoff Brennan, played frequently at Bay Area clubs. Josh remains one of Omar’s favorite drummers – a versatile musician and educator equally at home in Latin, jazz, hip-hop, and fusion styles.
Sheldon Brown was a member of Omar’s first Septet ensemble in the Bay Area, performing in San Francisco and Oakland and around the world in support of Omar’s earliest recording projects, ‘Free Roots’, ‘Spirit of the Roots’, and ‘Bembon’, also known as the Roots Trilogy. Sheldon is a talented composer, arranger and producer whose first recording, Shifting Currents, caught Omar’s ear when he initially moved to San Francisco in 1995. Ernesto Mazar Kindelan is a dynamic Cuban musician who came to the San Francisco Bay Area in 2014 following a ten-year stint with Charanga Habanera, the celebrated Cuban timba band from Havana.
Omar’s Quarteto Americanos plays a number of arrangements of Omar’s signature compositions from his early career, including ‘My Three Notes’, ‘Angustia’, and ‘Toridanzón’, as well as new songs written by Omar in Barcelona during the lockdown in 2020. Like Omar’s oeuvre, Quarteto Americanos’ repertoire is eclectic and energizing. Its improvisational approach seamlessly fuses elements of jazz, Latin, hip-hop, and electronica into an exciting, passionate, contemporary sound.
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AHMED ABDULLAH
The trumpeter performed in New York’s loft scene with various groups including the Melodic Art-Tet (Charles Brackeen, Roger Blank and Ronnie Boykins, later William Parker). Ahmed Abdullah formed his own band in 1972, and joined the Sun Ra Arkestra in 1975, working there on and off until 1993, when Sun Ra died. He stayed on with the Arkestra after Sun Ra’s demise working under the leadership of John Gilmore and then Marshall Allen. During his time with the Arkestra, Abdullah participated in more than 25 recordings and traveled extensively with Sun Ra. After leaving the Arkestra, Abdullah wrote memoirs of his time with that organization. In 2002, Ahmed began teaching a course on the Music and Philosophy of Sun Ra at the New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music.
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VANESSA RUBIN
Revered as both a torchbearer and a storyteller, jazz vocalist Vanessa Rubin possesses a voice hailed for crystalline clarity, hearth-like warmth and playful lioness sass. The Cleveland native brings a wealth of diverse influences to her vocal performance from both the Trinidadian/Caribbean roots of her mother and traditional jazz by way of her Louisiana-born father. Additional homespun influences include the melodic bell tone clarity of a young Capital Records recording artist, Nancy Wilson, the fire of Lambert, Hendricks & Ross, the sweet sounds of trumpeter Blue Mitchell as well as her love of the Motown Sound…especially girl groups like the Supremes.
Rubin’s passion for rich musical stories are evidenced throughout her eight albums thus far plus numerous guest appearances. Highlights include the evocative “Voyager II” from the pen of Teri Thornton, “Inside a Silent Tear” written by Blossom Dearie, a refashioned waltz version of John Coltrane’s “Giant Steps” lyricized by New York Voices and an arrangement of “Superwoman” by Stevie Wonder insipired by the Ahmad Jamal recording of “Poinciana”. So while she has one foot planted in tradition – sticking close to timeless melodies and exquisite vocal forms – Rubin waxes adventurous, embracing stories lesser told while employing lessons of acclaimed storytellers in song such as Carmen McRae, Shirley Horn and Freddy Cole.
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