Stanley Clarke Band at The Carver

Stanley Clarke
The Carver Community Cultural Center / Jo Long Theatre
The New Season 2025/26
San Antonio, TX
October 11, 2025

A capacity crowd at The Carver's Jo Long Theatre celebrated the opening of San Antonio's 2025 season on October 11 with a high-spirited set from Stanley Clarke and his ensemble. The playbill promised "incredible, soulful, virtuosic" music, which the renowned bassist and his youthful ensemble delivered. Despite the intricate arrangements and blazing tempos, there was not a shred of sheet music on the stage, a true testament to the sweat equity involved on and off the bandstand.

One day later, on October 12th at Stable Hall, the roaring applause of Musical Bridges' SRO audience led an incredulous Kinan Azmeh to ask for the house lights to be turned up after the first number, just so the clarinetist could catch a glimpse of the faces in that joyous crowd. So went opening night at two of the city's beloved cultural institutions, boding well for the season to come.

Stanley Clarke's 4Ever Band

The masterful young pros in Clarke's ensemble that night were powerhouse Chicago drummer Jeremiah Collier, dazzling Detroit violinist Evan Garr, ace New York pianist and multi-instrumentalist Julius Rodriguez—who has released four albums to date under his own name for Verve—and McLean, Virginia-born LA-based guitarist Colin Cook.

Working with young musicians is nothing new to Clarke. "I've always been really in love with mentoring young people, because that's what happened to me when I was younger," he said in a documentary short about his three-year artist residency in Santa Monica. "I wanted to be a music teacher," he continued. "I love playing live, but—believe it or not—my favorite thing in life is teaching kids." He went on to say that "the beautiful thing about being a musician" is being able to create opportunities for others, which he continues to do through the Stanley Clarke Foundation, which offers scholarships to talented young musicians, and through the program he helped to create in Santa Monica, where he gives public lectures and serves as a teacher and mentor to Santa Monica College and local public high school students.

Giving back comes naturally to the Philadelphia-born five-time Grammy Award winner, whose initial aim was to become the first Black member of the Philadelphia Orchestra; that is, until—at age 17 or 18—he met up with Chick Corea, 10 years his senior, and went to to become a founding member of the innovative jazz fusion band, Return to Forever. "I believe that art has a special place in society," he stresses. "It keeps the powder keg from completely blowing off," as he put it. "It's not talked about a lot on the news, like the other stuff, the negative stuff." But his belief is that "almost every musician is a part of that effort to keep things cool, using beauty and love." His experience as a world citizen is that, despite political differences among musicians and people involved in the arts, "there's a bond there that keeps the peace." A good thought to hold in divisive times.

The Carver performance included blistering repertoire from Return to Forever days and jazz classics like Joe Henderson's "Black Narcissus" and Charles Mingus' "Goodbye, Pork Pie Hat." In a fast-paced, action-packed 90-minute set, Mingus' tender elegy for his friend Lester Young was a standout. The performance was as beautiful to watch as to hear, as Clarke picked up his electric bass and began out of time, stretching the strings and pulling at the pitches to create a melodic opening chorus that resonated as much with the bluesy version he had played with rock guitarist Jeff Beck back in the 1970s as with Mingus. With bass assuming the role of lead guitar, down an octave, the piece has been in his solo repertoire since the '80s and still shines. He picked up his double bass for "Black Narcissus," another crowning moment, galvanizing the ensemble with his reverberant sound, finely honed beat and dynamic phrasing.

Down the Road

An anticipated highlight of the Carver's 2025-2026 season is an evening with the great Mavis Staples, who takes center stage at the Jo Long Theatre on November 21, 2025. A winner of multiple Grammy, Blues Music and Americana Awards, NPR has declared the blues and rock Hall of Famer and civil rights activist as "one of America's defining voices of freedom and peace." As the playbill notes, "She marched with Martin Luther King, Jr., performed at John F. Kennedy's inauguration, sang in Barack Obama's White House and has collaborated with everyone from Prince and Bob Dylan to Arcade Fire and Aretha Franklin." On stage November 8, 2025 is Avery Sunshine , who won the Grammy for Progressive R&B album in 2025 for So Glad to Know You (BigShine Recordings, 2024). Upcoming acts include J-Darius & The Experience, The String Queens, Turtle Island Quartet, Parsons Dance, Leah Glenn Dance Theatre, MacArthur Fellow Reginald Dwayne Betts' Felon, Heather Raffo's Tomorrow Will Be Sunday and Take Six, a popular favorite on the storied Carver stage.

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