RODNEY JONES
A foursome of world-class musicians who have worked with countless top talents (like Herbie Hancock, Dizzy Gillespie, James Brown, Stevie Wonder) Rodney Jones Quartet thrills audiences worldwide by not just playing straight ahead jazz at its highest level, but performing for the audience, sharing stories about the music and its meaning.
Bandleader Jones was also the Apollo Theater house guitarist and staff guitarist on Rosie O’Donnell’s TV show. Jazz Times called him a “consummate guitarist.”
Featuring Rodney Jones, guitar | Ron Blake, saxophone | Lonnie Plaxico, bass | Ronnie Burrage, drums
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
George Abel Van Eps was born on August 7, 1913 in Plainfield, New Jersey into a family of musicians. His mother was a classical pianist, his father was a ragtime banjoist and sound engineer and his three brothers were musicians. He began playing banjo at eleven years old but after hearing Eddie Lang on the radio, he devoted himself to guitar. By thirteen, in 1926, he was performing on the radio.
Through the middle of the 1930s, he played with Harry Reser, Smith Ballew, Freddy Martin, Benny Goodman, and Ray Noble. Van Eps moved to Los Angeles, California and spent most of his remaining career as a studio musician, playing on many commercials and movie soundtracks.
In the 1930s, he invented a model of guitar with another bass string added to the common six-string guitar. The seven-string guitar allowed him to play bass lines below his chord voicings, unlike the single-string style of Charlie Christian and Django Reinhardt. He called his technique “lap piano”, as it anticipated the fingerpicking style of country guitarists Chet Atkins and Merle Travis and inspired jazz guitarists Bucky Pizzarelli, John Pizzarelli, and Howard Alden to pick up the seven-string.
Dixieland had a following in Los Angeles during the 1940s and 1950s, and he played in groups led by Bob Crosby and Matty Matlock and appeared in the film Pete Kelly’s Blues. He played guitar on Frank Sinatra’s 1955 album. In The Wee Small Hours.
Playing guitar into his eighties, he built a career that lasted over sixty years. Swing and mainstream guitarist George Van Eps, who recorded eleven albums as a leader and thirty~two as a sideman, transitioned from pneumonia on November 29, 1998 in Newport Beach, California at the age of 85.
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RANDY NAPOLEAN QUARTET
Known as a forward-thinking musician with a passion for the jazz tradition, guitarist Randy Napoleon is an Associate Professor at Michigan State University. He is currently touring as a leader after twenty years of road apprenticeship with some of the most celebrated musicians and groups of our time.
Napoleon cut his teeth touring with pianist Benny Green, The Clayton-Hamilton Jazz Orchestra, Michael Buble, and a thirteen year tenure with Freddy Cole. He has also performed with artists across the jazz spectrum such as Bill Charlap, Natalie Cole, Monty Alexander, Rodney Whitaker and John Pizzarelli.
Napoleon has performed or arranged on over seventy records. He arranged as well as performed on Freddy Cole’s seven most recent records including the Grammy-nominated releases, Freddy Cole Sings Mr. B and My Mood Is You. He performed on The Clayton Hamilton Orchestra: Live at MCG. Napoleon is featured on Buble’s Grammy-nominated CD/DVD Caught in the Act.
Napoleon has played on The Tonight Show, Late Night With David Letterman, The View, The Today Show, and The Ellen DeGeneres show as well as TV shows in South America, Europe and Asia. He has performed across the globe at notable venues including Royal Albert Hall, The Sydney Opera House, The Hollywood Bowl, and Lincoln Center.
THE BAND:
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Frank Deniz was born Francisco Antonio Deniz on July 31, 1912 in Cardiff, Wales. His father, an African born in Cape Verde, was a seaman, and his mother was of English and African-American descent. They were amateur musicians, father playing violin and mother playing piano. From the age of 15 he joined his father on sea voyages. In 1931 his father was taken ill and the lad was forced to leave him in hospital in Odessa, Ukraine where he died. Between voyages he played music, inspired by jazz guitarists Teddy Bunn and Eddie Lang.
He married pianist Clara Wason in 1936 and they moved to London, England and found work as musicians in Soho. In 1937 they played for a time in the orchestra of Ken “Snakehips” Johnson. Deniz later played at Adelaide Hall’s Florida Club in Mayfair, where he played with pianist Fela Sowande.
Joining the Merchant Navy in 1940, he played music in between voyages with contemporaries Eric Winstone and Edmundo Ros, and formed his own band, the Spirits of Rhythm. In 1944 he was wounded when his ship was torpedoed on approaching Anzio.
Stanley Black, leader of the BBC Dance Orchestra employed him regularly and introduced him to others in the music business. Deniz joined Harry Parry’s Radio Rhythm Club Sextet, which had a regular radio series. In 1953 with his brothers, he formed the Hermanos Deniz Cuban Rhythm Band, which gave regular broadcasts in the 1950s regularly through to the 1970s.
Deniz composed music with his brother Laurence for the 1959 film Our Man in Havana. He accompanied Hoagy Carmichael on a tour of Britain. In his later years he played with the Hermanos Deniz band at the Talk of the Town. This continued for many years until his retirement in 1980, when they lived in Málaga Spain during the summer, until Clara contracted Parkinson’s disease in the 1990s. At this point Deniz became her caregiver until her death.
Guitarist Frank Deniz transitioned on July 17, 2005 at his home in Stanstead Abbotts, Hertfordshire, England.
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SUPERBLUE: KURT ELLING AND CHARLIE HUNTER
GRAMMY® Award-winner Kurt Elling is without question today’s preeminent male jazz vocalist, renowned worldwide for his unparalleled virtuosity and flair for trailblazing artistic exploration. From his stunning reinvention of timeless standards to his own captivating original songcraft, the Chicago-based musician has fused his dazzling talents across a panoply of musical approaches, emblazoning each with signature imagination, insight, and emotional intelligence.
Where many male jazz vocalists at this stage in a much vaunted career have tended to stick to the tried and true, Elling seems to be growing more ambitious and experimental with the passing of time, a tendency evidenced by his stunning new LP, SuperBlue: The Iridescent Spree. The followup to 2021’s remarkable SuperBlue, the album once again sees Elling joining forces with producer/guitarist Charlie Hunter and multi-instrumentalist duo drummer Corey Fonville and bassist-keyboardist DJ Harrison for a kaleidoscopic collection of new songs, surprising covers, and dynamic reinventions.
Showtimes ~ 8:00pm | 10:00pm
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