Seattle Repertory Jazz Orchestra photo by Daniel Sheehan
SRJO presents Miles Ahead: Miles Davis & Gil Evans
Sunday, November 6, 2pm | Kirkland Performance Center
Presented by Seattle Repertory Jazz Orchestra
$15-49
Seattle Repertory Jazz Orchestra performs a rousing tribute to the seminal 1957 collaboration between Miles Davis and Gil Evans, Miles Ahead. The album merged Davis’ brassy bravado with Evans’ novel orchestral instrumentations to create one of the most celebrated jazz albums of all time. This concert will highlight several trumpeters from SRJO, including Jay Thomas, Thomas Marriott, Michael Van Bebber, and Andy Omdahl, as they bring works such as “Maids of Cadiz” and “My Ship” to life, along with other works rarely performed.
The SRJO, founded in 1995, is a 17-piece big band jazz ensemble dedicated to preserving and celebrating the unique American art form of large ensemble jazz. Its performers consist of some of Seattle’s most passionate and experienced jazz musicians, playing an extensive repertoire drawn from all across jazz’s 100-year history.
Dee Daniels Trio
Sunday, November 6, 8pm | Seattle Art Museum (Plestcheeff Auditorium)
Welcomed by 88.5 KNKX
$24 general | $22 members & seniors | $10 students & military
There are few in the Northwest who have not fallen in love with the engaging range and passionate performances of Dee Daniels. Born in the Bay Area, and with gospel and R&B roots, Daniels is a music leader, augmenting the performances and teaching quality of the Jazz Port Townsend Festival, Lionel Hampton International Jazz Festival in Boise, and the Frank De Miero Jazz Festival in Edmonds.
As a younger singer, Daniels honed her style with a five-year period living in the Netherlands and Belgium. Back in the States and in Canada, attention to Daniels increased quickly, resulting in appearances and recordings with jazz greats Toots Thielemans, Clark Terry, John Clayton, and others.
The range of her international work includes performing throughout Africa, Europe and the United Kingdom, Australia, Hong Kong, and Japan. But a focus on the Vancouver area brought opportunities to teach, and even an honorary Doctorate Degree from Capilano University, where she established a vocal scholarship. She’s been a lead performer in symphony pops programs with many major city orchestras, and has delivered stirring performances with the Jazz Vespers at St. Peter’s Church in New York City, as well as Newark and Saskatoon.
Her album work over the years, including her 2007 album JAZZINIT and more recent album Choose Me, simultaneously reflects strength, versatility, and creativity.
Tonight, she performs with an ensemble of local talent: Tony Foster (piano), Chuck Deardorf (bass), and Greg Williamson (drums).
Rokia Traoré
Monday, November 7, 7:30pm | Triple Door
Presented by Triple Door
$30-40
Defying the conventions of world music, Malian singer/songwriter Rokia Traoré dismisses the notion of genre, effortlessly blending the sounds of Mali with blues, rock, jazz, and folk. One of the most inventive artists in Africa today, Traoré is remarkable not just for the range of her powerful and emotional voice but also for her stunning live performances that range from up-tempo guitar-led pop to haunting and melancholy ballads. On her 2016 release, Né So, Traoré turns to friends John Parish (PJ Harvey, Eels), John Paul Jones (Led Zeppelin), and Devendra Banhart to help her express her deep sadness at the state of turmoil in her native Mali. Lamenting her homeland’s loss of life, culture, and traditions, Traoré will draw audiences in with a striking translation from emotion to song, including transcriptions of some of Toni Morrison’s prolific writings. With her unmistakable vocals, stunning stage presence, and deep West African well of music, the Malian singer provides a dazzling concert experience. A Seattle favorite, she returns with the testimonies to the soul and endurance of her homeland.
Vijay Iyer & Wadada Leo Smith Duo
Wednesday, November 9, 8pm | Benaroya Hall, Illsley Ball Nordstrom Recital Hall
Co-presented with Live @ Benaroya Hall
$28 general | $26 members & seniors | $12 students & military
This concert promises to be a stunning, not-to-be-missed highlight in the festival. The brilliant Vijay Iyer is a Grammy-nominated pianist, composer, bandleader, electronic musician, educator, and writer whose artistic vision redefines jazz and creative American music. Iyer’s career has bridged the arts, humanities, and the sciences, and his compositions reach across genres and disciplines. Fueled by his impassioned explorations of varied musical communities, practices, histories, and theories, his creative work rewards the listener with richly varied, improvisation-driven music.
Iyer’s compositions feature elaborate melodic constructions and intricate rhythmic techniques influenced by South Indian classical music, West African drumming, contemporary European composers, and 20th century African American piano masters. He creates a unique voice in diverse musical contexts while reaffirming the place of music not just as entertainment but as an essential part of human society.
The recipient of a Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley, Iyer performed at dozens of music festivals and jazz clubs nationally and around the world. In January 2014, he joined the Harvard University Department of Music as the Rosenblatt Professor of the Arts. Recent honors include a 2013 MacArthur fellowship and the 2015 DownBeat Critics’ Poll award for Jazz Artist of the Year.
The legendary trumpeter and composer Wadada Leo Smith exemplifies creative vitality as an ongoing force, setting new directions in innovative contemporary music. A boldly original figure in American jazz, he was a founding member of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Music. His compositions have been performed by the AACM Orchestra and the Kronos Quartet.
Smith received the prestigious 2016 Doris Duke Artist Award, was recognized as “Composer of the Year” at the 19th Annual Jazz Journalists Association Jazz Awards, and was honored with 2016 Mohn Career Achievement Award by the Hammer Museum at UCLA.
The latest collaborative work by Iyer and Smith, A Cosmic Rhythm with Each Stroke (ECM), is dedicated to the late Indian artist Nasreen Mohamedi, known for her drawings and photography.
“Iyer and Smith may represent two different generations of artists but both are at their creative peaks,” says All About Jazz of their collaboration.
Eugenie Jones
Thursday, November 10, 5:30pm | Seattle Art Museum (Brotman Forum)
Co-presented with Seattle Art Museum
Free and open to the public
This year’s 2016 Golden Ear Award, Vocalist of The Year winner, Eugenie Jones, teams up with pianist Peter Adams, bassist Greg Feingold, guitarist Cole Schuster, and drummer Brian Smith to dedicate a night to the late Ernestine Anderson.
Jones’ debut album Black Lace Blue Tears won the Golden Ear Award for “Recording of the Year” in 2013. Of her second album, Jazziz Magazine says, “Seattle-based vocalist Eugenie Jones may have been a latecomer to the jazz world, but she displays the seasoned sensibilities of a jazz lifer on her sophomore release, Come Out Swingin’.”
She has attracted positive attention from DownBeat, Jazz Weekly, All About Jazz, and many more jazz journals. Critical Jazz reviewer Brent Black says Jones is “full of passion and raw emotion….[she is] that rare breed of artist that sidesteps pretentiousness and allows the music to take center stage.” Another must hear.
Tarik Abouzied, Joe Doria, Dan Balmer, Damian Erskine
Friday, November 11, 7:30pm | Tula’s Restaurant & Jazz Club
$20 general | $18 members & seniors | $10 students & military
In a rocking Northwest grouping, renowned Seattle drummer Tarik Abouzied calls on old friends Joe Doria on Hammond B-3, Portland guitar legend Dan Balmer, and badass bassist Damian Erskine for a memorable close to this year’s festival.
Renowned for his taut, tough backbeats, Abouzied is a veteran of such celebrated Seattle jazz-funk outfits as McTuff and Happy Orchestra. Abouzied has produced six albums collectively between his groups, which also include instrumental funk septet Pocket Change, and modern jazz-fueled Hardcoretet. Currently, the drummer produces new big band Happy Orchestra, which was awarded 4Culture’s 2015 Arts Project Grant and nominated as Earshot Jazz’s 2015 Alternative Jazz Group of the Year.
With roots together in Seattle’s hallmark funk/jazz Hammond organ trio McTuff, Abouzied pairs up again with organ icon Joe Doria. The go-to keys master is hardly in need of an introduction, continually stunning his audiences with his ability to add depth and dimension to every song he performs. Doria is a backbone member to a handful of groups including his own Joe Doria Trio, The Drunken Masters, Skerik’s Syncopated Taint Septet, and Spellbinder, featuring renowned drummer Michael Shrieve of Santana.
Two of Portland’s most acclaimed music educators and master disciples of their instruments – Damian Erksine and Dan Balmer – complete the quartet. Balmer impresses as one of only five Oregonians to be honored with membership in both The Oregon Music Hall of Fame and the Jazz Society of Oregon Hall of Fame, and has been hailed as “the model of what a contemporary guitarist should be” (Los Angeles Times).
Seattle Symphony: Sonic Evolution
Friday, November 11, 8pm | Benaroya Hall, S. Mark Taper Foundation Auditorium
Presented by Seattle Symphony
$21-30
The Seattle Symphony presents the perfect collaboration to close out Seattle’s jazz festival. This evening of orchestral and ensemble works celebrates Seattle’s jazz legacy with an homage to iconic producer Quincy Jones, who began his stellar career in jazz and popular music at Garfield High School and appeared as a trumpeter and band leader on Seattle’s fabled Jackson Street. Appropriately, the award-winning Garfield Jazz Band, under Clarence Acox, joins the orchestra for tunes from the Jones “book.” The phenomenal Seattle-resident trumpeter Cuong Vu plays a new composition with the symphony. And, because November 11 is the birthday of Jones’s contemporary, the much-loved and recently departed treasure Ernestine Anderson, vocalist Grace Love sings some of “Stine’s” favorites.
And don’t miss an opening performance by a Seattle JazzED combo, in the Benaroya Hall lobby!
