SAN FRANCISCO, CASFJAZZ the leading nonprofit jazz organization on the West Coast and the presenter of the 28th San Francisco Jazz Festival, running September 14 through November 20, today announced October 2010 concert dates for the SFJAZZ Collective. The award-winning all-star Collective roster includes veteran alto saxophonist and MacArthur grantee Miguel Zenón, tenor saxophonist Mark Turner, vibraphonist Stefon Harris, pianist and 2010 Guggenheim Fellow Edward Simon, bassist Matt Penman, and drummer Eric Harland. For these performances, trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire and trombonist Luis Bonilla will be subbing for current members Avishai Cohen and Robin Eubanks, respectively.
This Collective lineup is a perfect balance among founding members, multi-year veterans and exciting additions. They will perform new arrangements of the work of legendary pianist Horace Silver and fresh original compositions by each of the eight Collective members.
Launched in 2004 by SFJAZZ and named 2009 Small Group Ensemble of the Year by the Jazz Journalists Association, the SFJAZZ Collective is a workshop band unlike any other in jazz. The group features a changing lineup with each member hand-selected to contribute their own unique sounds, styles and voices. They are all distinguished not just by degree, but diversity of talent and each member is a celebrated instrumentalist, an outstanding composer and arranger, and most are among today's most lauded bandleaders. The Collective also presents a global music perspective with musicians from Puerto Rico (Zenón), New Zealand (Penman), Venezuela (Simon) and Costa Rica (Bonilla).
The 2010 composer of choice is Horace Silver. At 72, Silver can look back on an influential career lasting more than five decades. Although he is best known for the string of recordings he made for Blue Note from the mid-'50s to 1980 and his trademark compositions including Song For My Father," Sister Sadie," Doodlin'" and Señor Blues," his influence on the contemporary jazz scene continues to be felt many ways: in the tenor saxophone and trumpet front line sound that he
helped establish as a standard for small jazz groups; in the hard bop accents and arching melodies that continue to be part of the jazz repertoire; in the convincing blends of jazz, blues, Latin and Caribbean rhythms that Silver added to the jazz mainstream. The Collective's approach to Silver's music reaches out to embrace its engaging qualities, while leading it into new interpretative realms, as well. Add to that the original works by the Collective's membersinspired by Silverand the result is yet another standard-setting program of performances by an ensemble that is...not quite like any other.
Featured on this tour is one of today's best up-and-coming jazz musicians, trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire, who is on a trajectory not seen in jazz for several years. Winner of both the 2007 Carmine Caruso International Jazz Trumpet Solo Competition and the 2007 Thelonious Monk International Jazz Competition, he was recently signed to Blue Note Records. After graduating Berkeley High School and the famed Berkeley High Jazz Ensemble, he received a scholarship to the Manhattan School of Music. He is a recent graduate of the Masters program at USC and the Monk Institute. Ambrose has worked with such artists as Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter, Ron Carter, Wallace Roney, Jimmy Heath, Jason Moran, and was a member of Greg Osby's band for several years. Also in the spotlight for these dates is Luis Bonilla. The California raised, Costa Rican trombonist, composer and arranger has sought out, taken in and mastered an incredible array of musical styles. Currently a member of the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra, the Afro-Latin Jazz Orchestra under Arturo O'Farrill's direction (both 2009 Grammy winners) and Dave Douglas' latest group, Brass Ecstasy, Bonilla is one of those rare artists whose work is always expanding, taking in more and more while remaining singular and focused.
Given the elite talent assembled in the SFJAZZ Collective, it is tempting, on first glance, to think of this ensemble as just another all-star band." But as the Collective" portion of the group's name suggests, these exceptional artists have come together in pursuit of a larger purposenamely, the celebration of jazz as a constantly evolving, ever-relevant, quintessentially modern art form.
This conception of the music is shared by SFJAZZ, the San Francisco-based nonprofit institution that is the group's namesake and producer. The idea for the Collective arose from turn-of-the-millennium discussions between SFJAZZ's founder and executive director, Randall Kline, and saxophonist and founding Collective member Joshua Redman. While deeply respectful of jazz's origins and early traditions, SFJAZZ was concerned that the modern side of jazz, from roughly the mid-20th-century to the present day, was often overlooked in the public eye in comparison with the music of jazz's so-called Golden Age." Both Kline and Redman were eager to showcase, in a manner that would resonate with jazz aficionados and newcomers alike, the artistic continuum from modern masters like John Coltrane (2004), Ornette Coleman (2005), Herbie Hancock (2006), Thelonious Monk (2007), Wayne Shorter (2008), McCoy Tyner (2009) and now, Horace Silver, to today's new generation of players. Much like chamber music, the music is designed for a small group of instruments to be performed in intimate settings and atmospheres including performing arts centers, concert halls and salons.
Past Collective members have included the likes of Joshua Redman, Bobby Hutcherson, Dave Douglas, Nicholas Payton, Joe Lovano, Josh Roseman, Renee Rosnes, Robert Hurst, Brian Blade and other jazz stars.
Each year, SFJAZZ Records produces a deluxe, limited edition CD set of live performance recordings of the SFJAZZ Collective's entire repertoire for that year. The next release, Live 2010: 7th Annual Concert Tour, (release date September 14, 2010), features the Collective's Spring 2010 tour, with repertoire including the work of Horace Silver and original compositions by group members recorded live on tour dates in the U.S. and Europe. SFJAZZ Records has released six previous limited-edition CD sets since 2004, documenting the SFJAZZ Collective's complete annual repertoire in concert, as well as a concert DVD filmed at 2007's Jazz à Vienne Festival in France. All recordings and more information on the SFJAZZ Collective and SFJAZZ can be found at sfjazz.org.
SFJAZZ COLLECTIVE FALL 2010 U.S. TOUR
October 14Williams Center for the Arts, Lafayette College, Easton, PA
October 15The Egg, Albany, NY
October 17Mary D'Angelo Performing Arts Center, Mercyhurst College, Erie, PA
October 23Staller Center for the Arts, SUNY Stony Brook, Stony Brook, NY
October 24Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center, Univ. of Maryland, College Park, MD
October 27Modlin Center for the Arts, Univ. of Richmond, Richmond, VA
October 28Duke Performances, Duke University, Durham, NC
October 29Aycock Auditorium, Univ. of North Carolina at Greensboro, Greensboro, NC