The Jazz Voyager

Delray Beach is the next destination for this Jazz Voyager. Had a great time in Buenos Aires but we know all good things must terminate on another ten hour flight returning home. The Arts Garage is this week’s destination and is a venue that presents a wide variety of music to a multi-cultural, multi-aged, multi-faceted South Florida audience.  I’ll be arriving at Miami International, taking the tri-rail to Delray Beach and then a Lyft to the venue. The venue doubles as a gallery, and the performance space is set up with eight seat rounds so you get to meet new people each time you go.

Cyrille Aimée will be gracing the stage for this particular visit and brings her Afro-Caribbean sensibility of the Dominican Republic to the music. A matchless interpreter of song, she has worked with Wynton Marsalis and Roy Hargrove, performed at the Apollo in Harlem, got an invitation from Steven Sondheim to star  in a tribute and has received a Grammy nomination.

Cover: $50.00~$55.00

Arts Garage is situated at 94 NE 2nd Avenue, Delray Beach, FL 33444. For more information visit artsgarage.org.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Mark Gross was born February 20, 1966 in Baltimore, Maryland and grew up listening to gospel in his childhood home. His interests in classical music led him to the Baltimore School for the Arts, then studied one semester at Howard University. He matriculated four years at Berklee College of Music, earning a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Music Performance and upon graduation in 1988, Gross began his professional music career in jazz.

Gross has toured the world with the Mark Gross Quartet, Buster Williams, Philip Harper, Nat Adderley, Dave Holland, Mulgrew Miller, Nicholas Payton, Delfeayo Marsalis, Wynton Marsalis, Dizzy Gillespie, Nancy Wilson, Jimmy Heath, Dizzy Gillespie Alumni Big Band, Village Vanguard Jazz Orchestra, Tom Harrell Big Band, Duke Ellington Orchestra, Cyrus Chestnut, Regina Carter, Stephon Harris, Walter Booker, Jimmy Cobb, Don Braden, Lenora Zenzalai Helm, among others.

He has performed several times on Broadway including Five Guys Named Moe, Shuffle Along and Ain’t Too Proud: The Life and Times of The Temptations. Mark first recorded as a solo act in 1997 with Preach Daddy, followed by his sophomore project in 2000 The Riddle of the Sphinx. In 2013 he recorded Blackside, Mark Gross + Strings five years later and the soon to be released  The Gospel According to Mark: A Jazz Suite this year.

Alto saxophonist Mark Gross, who plays in the hard bop tradition, continues to perform, compose and tour.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Corrado Abbate was born on February 19, 1958 in Turin, Italy. Originally trained as a classical pianist, he quickly turned to jazz and soon demonstrated a distinct aptitude for composition and arrangement.

During the 1980s he led a number of groups highly active on the Torinese scene, Arsis, Modal Jazz Quintet, and Sharp Eleventh, playing everything from hard bop to modal, from fusion to free-funk. He helped launch many talented young musicians, and during the same period he played with Massimo Urbani, Gianni Basso, Franco Mondini, Alfredo Ponissi, Luciano Bertolotti and many others.

1991 saw him forming his own quartet with tenor and soprano saxophonist Fulvio Albano, Claudio Nicola on double bass and drummer Raffaele Fontana. Two years later they recorded the album Brecce and played numerous concerts in Italy and important jazz festivals.

His next group was Primitivo, a group that was to become the most important acid-jazz band in the Turin area. With saxophonist Danilo Pala, the Cuban trumpeter Amik Guerra and percussionist Luis Casih, together with Nicola and Fontana they recorded Speed Jazz. In the new millennium  he formed the Jazzcom Project and Multiverse Jazz Quartet, and is a member of the Gigi Di Gregorio Ensemble and the Cluzon Big Band.

Pianist Corrado Abbate continues to take on projects in the theatrical field, compose music for stage, and perform as a jazz musician.

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Jazz Poems

Miles’ muted horn penetrates

like liquid, melancholy medicine

to the pinched nerve

of an old misery. I’d hit

the winning shot at State that night;

teary-eyed, Tina kissed me—

way past any doubt, then

wore distance like

a torn red dress the next day.

I feel the rend again–in the piano,

I hear her long, practiced excuses

in Coltrane’s troubling tenor—

mixed with the loneliness

I’d felt at seventeen, standing

between rusted railroad tracks

in July.

I turn the lights off–

they go black.

Spare, midnight tones tug at me,

I lean back hard into the past:

I see that winning shot go in,

I see her run at me, again,

and for a moment—she’s there

mingled in Coltrane’s tenor.

What if

I never get past this pain,

just then Miles wavers back in

with an antidote—

traying eights behind

the ivorys. It works

this time, if I only knew

how it means.

DARRELL BURTON

from Jazz Poems ~ Selected and Edited by Kevin Young

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Jimmy Jewell was born on February 18, 1945 in the United Kingdom and began his career in 1962, participating in several jazz and rhythm and blues bands including Eddie Marten and the Sabres. Going professional the following year he joined the band Kris Ryan and the Questions after the band’s drummer Geoff Wills recommended his inclusion. With Jewell’s participation, Questions shifted genres, from rock to something more soul-oriented. Owing to artistic differences with Ryan, he left the band after final gigs in Germany during 1965.

In 1966 he moved to London, England played for a while in the Freddie Mack Sound and subsequently toured Germany with Chris Andrews and the Paramounts. Jimmy joined the Magics, a Berlin band, and toured Germany. In 1967, back in London, he played gigs with Lord “Caesar” Sutch & the Roman Empire, and the joined soul band Stewart James Inspiration, with whom he toured until their dissolution 1968.

After joining the Keef Hartley Band, Jewell played Woodstock and a couple of albums were released with his saxophone sound: The Battle of North West Six and The Time Is Near. A was a prolific session musician and band member during the 1970s, he recorded during 1973 and 1974 appearing on Ronnie Lane’s Anymore for Anymore. He recorded with the Hollies on their self-titled album. In the Seventies he recorded for Maggie Bell and Andy Fairweather Low, toured with Gallagher and Lyle and appeared on two of their albums.

He recorded with Fairport Convention, Chris de Burgh, performed with Roger Daltrey, John Lodge and with the Hollies. Jimmy went on to release two albums: I’m Amazed and From the First Time I Met You. By the Eighties work became occasional, including small jazz bands and collaboration with bluesman Lonnie Brooks on the 1981 album Turn On The Night.

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