The Jazz Voyager

From Northern California to Charm City sitting on the Chesapeake Bay for a night of music and then a short hop down to the Eastern Shore for the best crab cakes on the East Coast. The spot this Jazz Voyager will be in, the Keystone Korner Baltimore, is the second iteration of the famous club of the same name that held jazz down in SAn Francisco during the upheaval of music leading to the rise of rock and R&B.

This week the band taking the stage is The Heavy Hitters, a band composed of leader Mike LeDonne on piano, Eric Alexander on tenor saxophone, alto saxophonist Vincent Herring, trumpeter Sean Jones, Alexander Claffy on bass with drummer Kenny Washington. This voyager will be in the audience to savor the ambience and the jazz .

The venue is located at 1350 Lancaster Street, Baltimore, MD 21231. For more information you are invited to visit keystonekornerbaltimore.com.

CALIFORNIA JAZZ FOUNDATION

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Patrick Godfrey was born in Toronto, Canada on June 25, 1948 and began playing piano for church dances at age 12. HIs early influences were Fats Domino, Henry Mancini, Leonard Bernstein and Bach. He played and sang in a number of Toronto rock bands, which led to session work with many well known Canadian musicians Bruce Cockburn, Murray McLaughlan, Raffi, Marc Jordan, Shirley Eikhard, Ben Mink, and Mendelson Joe among others.

Around 1970 he worked with singer Len Udow in Winnipeg, Canada and met Richard Condie and wrote the music for Richard’s first animation. The subsequent friendship resulted in him scoring all of his animations. Godfrey has worked with many other animators, including David Fine and Alison Snowden for whom he scored the Oscar winner Bob’s Birthday and all 52 episodes of the TV series Bob and Margaret.

In demand as a producer, Patrick has produced albums featuring artists such as Holly Cole, The Flying Bulgar Klezmer Band, The Lafayette String Quartet, and Michael Jones. His personal recording career includes eighteen albums.

Pianist Patrick Godfrey continues to perform in concert and teaches improvisation, composition and songwriting at the Victoria Conservatory of Music, Victoria BC.

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THE HOSCHAR-PALMIERI QUINTET

Akron based drummer Drew Hoschar returns home from NYC. The Hoschar-Palmieri Quintet is a 5-piece jazz combo of the young rising stars of the Ohio jazz scenes pursuing jazz degrees at the Manhattan School of Music and the University of Cincinatti’s College-Conservatory of Music (CCM). Both originally from northeast Ohio, drummer Drew Hoschar co-band leads with saxophonist Colin Palmieri for a night of fresh, original music, tasteful modern arrangements, and timeless classics with a band of young, heavy-hitting Cincinnati natives featuring Evan Taylor on guitar, Alex Nicodemus on piano, and Jack Early on bass.

Drew Hoschar – drums and cymbals

Colin Palmeri – alto saxophone

Evan Taylor – guitar

Alex Nicodemus – piano

Jack Early – bass

 

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ERIC SCOTT REED & GENERATION X, Y & Z

Giveton Gellin – trumpet | Jon Beshay – tenor saxophone | Eric Reed – piano | Nick Joz – bass | Ethan Kogan – drums
Pianist Eric Reed leads this exciting quintet–Generation X, Y, and Z. His latest album, Black, Brown, and Blue, celebrates the rich and diverse music of composers of color. Reed calls the work a personal milestone and “the culmination of my life thus far. I’m freer than I’ve ever been in my personal life, and I’m freer than I’ve ever been in my music. I’m accepting who I am. I love who I am. And as I continue to evolve – my artistry, my sexuality, and my overall humanity – my music will continue to become more and more personal.” A widely respected and popular musician and mentor, Reed first rose to fame with Wynton Marsalis and has performed with artists as varied as Jessye Norman, Quincy Jones, and Patti Labelle. His perpetually swinging and sophisticated style has made him one of the important ambassadors of the music.
“Eric Reed has fully established himself in the forefront of jazz pianists.” – All About Jazz
*PLEASE NOTE: All 7PM and 9PM shows at Smoke are Dinner Shows

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Darius Brubeck was born David Darius Brubeck on June 14, 1947 in San Francisco, California into a musical family. His father Dave and mother Iola Brubeck named after his father’s teacher and mentor, French composer Darius Milhaud. Moving from Oakland, California they settled in Wilton, Connecticut in 1960 and ultimately graduated from Wilton High School in 1965.

Darius majored in ethnomusicology and the history of religion at Wesleyan University, graduating cum laude in 1969. While there he composed and performed the music for the film Christopher’s Movie Matinee. During the next decade and into the early 1980s he would go on to lead two groups, The Darius Brubeck Ensemble and Gathering Forces, cross America as a sideman with Don McLean and record two albums with guitarist Larry Coryell. He toured the world and recorded as a member of Two Generations of Brubeck and The New Brubeck Quartet, both led by his father.

In 1983, Brubeck and his South African wife, Catherine, moved to Durban, South Africa, joined the music Department at the University of Natal and initiated the first degree course in Jazz Studies offered by an African university. In 1989, he was appointed as Professor of Jazz Studies and Director of the Centre for Jazz and Popular Music, where he taught until 2005.

A move to London, England in 2005, Darius taught courses at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and Brunel University. Appointed as a Fulbright Senior Specialist in Jazz Studies in 2007, he taught at Yıldız Technical University in Istanbul, turkey and subsequently at the Gheorghe Dima Music Academy in Cluj-Napoca, Romania, in 2010.

His years in South Africa saw him forming five student/staff bands, record the album The Jazzanians: We Have Waited Too Long to be released in 2024, form the band Afro Cool Conceptwhich toured for nearly 15 years and recorded a live album in New Orleans.

As a composer Brubeck has written music for all types of ensemble, large and small. He has arranged and written an original composition for his father’s 80th birthday, and the Rockefeller Foundation awarded him a residency as a composer at the Bellagio Study and Conference Center in Italy.

Pianist, author, composer, arranger and educator Darius Brubeck, who has had a documentary film made by Michiel ten Kleij titled Playing the Changes: Tracking Darius Brubeck, currently leads The Darius Brubeck Quartet.

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