
Sunday, March 30, 7:30pm
Plestcheeff Auditorium, Seattle Art Museum
1300 First Avenue (Downtown)
Free Linda Oh workshop, Monday, March 31, noon, Cornish College of the Arts, Poncho Concert Hall, 710 E. Roy
One of the rising stars in jazz, bassist Linda Oh dazzled Earshot Jazz Festival audiences last year in the new quintet of trumpeter Dave Douglas, on whose Greenleaf record label she records. Her Sun Pictures (2013) quartet includes James Muller on guitar, along with two other festival standouts, Ben Wendel (of Kneebody) on saxophone and Ted Poor (a collaborator and UW jazz-program colleague of Cuong Vu) on drums.
The band’s material, as heard on Sun Pictures, her third album, comprises musical postcards from her travels across the country and around the world. In the two years after the release of her 2011 disc, Initial Here, Oh performed extensively whether leading her own groups or working in renowned trumpeter Dave Douglas’ new quintet and the Sound Prints quintet the Douglas and tenor saxophonist Joe Lovano led.
With her 2009 debut, Entry, Oh asserted herself as a fresh voice in modern jazz. Initial Here in 2012 drew deeply on her rich cultural heritage and broad range of inspirations to further define her musical autobiography.
Born in Malaysia to Chinese parents and raised in Western Australia, Oh arrived in New York with a love of jazz, early training in classical bassoon, and an adolescence spent playing electric bass in Aussie rock bands. She graduated with honors from the WA Academy of Performing Arts, and was a James Morrison Scholarship Finalist in 2003 and an IAJE Sister in Jazz in 2004. She received the ASCAP Young Jazz Composer’s award in 2008. She also received an honorary mention at the 2009 Thelonious Monk Bass Competition. Oh completed her master’s degree at the Manhattan School of Music in 2008, studying with Jay Anderson, John Riley, Phil Markowitz, Dave Liebman, and Rodney Jones. She now teaches the pre-college division there and conducts jazz video conference master-classes for high-schools around the US.
Opening the show is the Samantha Boshnack Quintet performing the premier of the trumpeter’s Nellie Bly Project, inspired by an intrepid late-19th century journalist, and other new works. With Boshnack are Beth Fleenor (clarinets, voice), Dawn Clement (piano), Isaac Castillo (bass), and Max Wood (drums). Boshnack is quickly gaining acclaim as a composer for her “open voicings, jaunty tempos, and buoyant timbral mixes have a friendly monster feel that achieves a bittersweet and elegiac mood of orchestral grandeur,” as DownBeat put it. The band, which is this month releasing its debut album, Exploding Syndrome, weaves evocative lines and deep grooves punctuated by explosive improvisations. Her intention in the music, Boshnack says, is to charge charge chamber precision with the syncopated rhythm of her blend of jazz, rock, contemporary chamber, world, and experimental music.
Admission: $18 adult, $16 seniors and Earshot Jazz members, $9 students at www.brownpapertickets.com and 800-838-3006.