Ralph Alessi photo by Daniel Sheehan

Ralph Alessi’s Baida
Thursday, February 6, 8pm
PONCHO Concert Hall, Cornish College

Ralph Alessi (trumpet), Gary Versace (piano), Drew Gress (bass), Nasheet Waits (drums)

Ralph Alessi’s Baida project – his ECM debut as a bandleader – is breathtaking in its atmospheric depth and melodic allure. On the album, Alessi’s steely quartet – with pianist Jason Moran, bassist Drew Gress and drummer Nasheet Waits – performs with extraordinary strength, clarity and finesse, an enthralling and captivating album experience at-length. Pianist Gary Versace subs on tour for Moran. These are four fearless improvisers dancing on Alessi’s scaffolding.

Alessi was born in San Francisco, the son of classical trumpeter Joe Alessi and opera singer Maria Leone. He studied with legendary bassist Charlie Haden at the California Institute for the Arts, moved to New York City, and soon became a ubiquitous presence on the downtown and Brooklyn scenes. Alessi has been a member of the faculty of the Eastman School of Music and is the founder and director of the Center and School for Improvisational Music, improvisational music workshops non-profit in Brooklyn. Since 2002, he has been on the jazz faculty at New York University. Alessi has excelled as an improviser in groups led by Steve Coleman, Uri Caine, Ravi Coltrane, Fred Hersch and Don Byron, as well as leading his own bands. Alessi’s Cognitive Dissonance (2010) and This Against That (2002) also feature Moran, Gress and Waits.

Alessi has been playing with Drew Gress since the late 1990s. “What I love about Drew’s playing are the choices he makes as a bass player. … His ears are amazing, and he’s a great composer himself, so he brings that sensibility to the music,” Alessi says. Gress 

Nasheet Waits – one of New York’s most creative drummers, deeply musical – provides the sound of surprise as well as groove in the group.

The quartet conducts a free masterclass at the Cornish College, February 6, noon.
Tickets to the concert are $22 general, $20 seniors and Earshot Jazz members, $11 students.

Brian Blade photo courtesy of the artist

Brian Blade Fellowship
Tuesday, February 18, 7:30pm
Cornish Playhouse  (formerly the Intiman Theater) at Seattle Center

One of the most distinctive and versatile future legends of jazz, Brian Blade, has held the dream drum chair in the Wayne Shorter Quartet since its inception. He has also played and recorded with Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, and a who’s who of jazz and pop. His enduring and ever-changing Fellowship project is a co-operative musical environment with the great composer/arranger Jon Cowherd on piano, Melvin Butler and Myron Walden on saxes, Dave Easley on pedal steel, Jeff Parker on guitar, and Christopher Thomas on bass. Their 2010 Earshot festival concert at EMP has become one of those events that people still talk about in hushed reverence. This will be another one for the ages. 

Masterclass information TBA.
Tickets to the concert are $24 general, $22 seniors and Earshot Jazz members, $12 students.
Presented in association with Icons Among Us: Jazz in the Present Tense.

Linda Oh by Vincent Soyez

Linda Oh Sun Pictures
Sunday, March 30, 7:30pm
Plestcheeff Auditorium, Seattle Art Museum

One of the brilliant rising stars in jazz, bassist Linda Oh dazzled Earshot Jazz Festival audiences last year in the new quintet of trumpeter Dave Douglas, on who’s Greenleaf record label she records. Her Sun Pictures quartet includes James Muller on guitar, along with other festival standouts, Ben Wendel (of Kneebody) on saxophone, and Ted Poor (Cuong Vu & UW) on drums. 

Workshop, Monday, March 31, noon, Cornish College of the Arts, Poncho Concert Hall, 710 E. Roy
Tickets to the concert are $18 general, $16 seniors and Earshot Jazz members, $9 students.