Results for "Oakland"

Steven Strauss

Everything since being Charles Brown's bass player in the late eighties has been a let down. My happy personal memories of stopping at ATMs with him after gigs warm my aging heart.

Debbie Poryes

The sophistication and warm power of Debbie Poryes’s music is hard to overstate. Her highly original compositions are influenced by jazz from bebop to post-bop to modern times, as well as by 20th-century classical music and free jazz. Her voicings, melodies and touch are exquisite. Her sense of time and swing are deeply felt, and yet she can also be light hearted. “Poryes is an inventive pianist, taking familiar standards and setting them slightly askew to re-examine them. Poryes’s originals are varied in their moods and effects, serene... powerful... admirable.” Cadence Magazine “Debbie Poryes and her infectious gifts as an abundantly creative jazz pianist- composer-arranger points out her distinctive identity among the huge crowd of excellent pianists

Brian Kelly

Born: March 16, 1960

Brian Kelly is an award-winning American composer, pianist, and recording artist producing contemporary instrumental and solo piano music. He has released three contemporary piano instrumental albums and published two sheet music songbooks. Brian's latest release, Butterfly Rapture, is a collection of twelve solo piano neoclassical pieces with jazz, gospel, and Celtic influences. The album, Kelly's third studio album, was awarded Best Instrumental/Piano Album in the Akedemia Music Awards (February 2016), and was awarded three medals from the Global Music Awards: a Silver Medal for Album (June 2016), a Silver Medal for Composition/Composer of the title-track “Butterfly Rapture” (June 2016), and a Bronze Medal for Instrumental Performance Solo (March 2016)

Ruthie Price

When Joy called me on the phone she told me she was "the beige one," but the name goes deeper than that. Drummer Ruthie Price, Vallejo pianist Joy Stewart, and bassist Rhonda Kinard, have named their trio after the Duke Ellington suite. The group came to our attention through Ruthie Price who first appeared here with Calvin Keys on guitar and Dayna Stepens on bass. I can tell you, Calvin is picky. She might be young, but she knows how to use her drumsticks, and who to bring with her when we asked her to come back on her own. The ladies know where they come from and where they're going. They kept people listening and cheering until midnight, while they played everything from jazz standards to a very hip Stevie Wonder suite

Lisa B aka Lisa Bernstein

Born: September 28

Lisa B (Lisa Bernstein) is a unique combination: award-winning literary poet and riveting singer, performer, and recording artist.

HER LITERARY POETRY is featured in her second book God in Her Ruffled Dress (10/23, What Books Press), her most recent full-length record "Reverberant" (Piece of Pie Records), her first book The Transparent Body (Wesleyan University Press), the chapbook Anorexia (Five Fingers Poetry), and 60+ literary magazines and anthologies, including Antaeus, Caliban, City Lights Review, Field, Kenyon Review, Lilith, Ploughshares, Poetry International, Tikkun, and Zyzzyva. 

Dick Whittington

Dick Whittington grew up in Los Angeles. At sixteen he studied with Sam Saxe, possibly the only jazz piano teacher of that era, who taught keyboard harmony and improvisation by analyzing the music of Charlie Parker, Bud Powell, and other great jazz pianists. After high school Dick began sitting in with the great musicians on L.A.'s vibrant South-Central jazz scene. While attending Cal State Northridge, where he received a degree in Elementary Education, he was working gigs with Bobby Hutcherson, Sonny Criss, Barney Kessel, Charles Lloyd, Charlie Hayden, Scott Lafaro, Gary Peacock, and Billy Higgins, later accompanying vocalists Anita O'Day, Ernestine Anderson, Dinah Washington, and Mel Torme. When a 1961 tour with saxophonist Dexter Gordon concluded at San Francisco's Jazz Workshop, Dick relocated to Berkeley, spending the next 30 years teaching Jazz Education in the Berkeley Public Schools, where he co-founded the nationally recognized Jazz Band Program

Lee Waterman

Lee Waterman - Guitarist, Composer, Producer Lee is originally from New York, where his early interest in music was nurtured by his grandmother, a locally prominent classical pianist. At the age of nine he studied drums and later played in the school band. In his late teens, Lee took up guitar and Latin percussion. For the next several years he studied jazz guitar and music theory with internationally known guitarist and author, Warren Nunes. This strong foundation in the classic jazz styles plus the multicultural influences of percussion studies forged his eclectic compositional style. Among his credits, Lee has led several Bay-Area based combos throughout the last three decades, has performed with sax great John Handy, Vocalist Mark Murphy, and Narada Michael Walden and opened for many headliners, including Tito Puente and Pancho Sanchez.

Carla Bley

Born: May 11, 1938

Carla Bley was born in Oakland, California in 1936. Her father Emil Borg, a piano teacher and church organist, began giving her music lessons when she was three years old and she was soon playing at church functions. But her musical education ended at the age of eight. Her formal education stopped entirely when she dropped out of high school after completing the tenth grade.

During her adolescence Carla was drawn to jazz and moved to New York City to be closer to the musicians she admired. She resumed her musical education by working as a cigarette girl at the notorious Birdland jazz club, where she was able to hear the greatest jazz musicians of the day. She met pianist Paul Bley and eventually relocated to Los Angeles, where Paul and his quartet had a steady gig at the Hillcrest Club. She began to write music. When saxophonist Ornette Coleman came on the scene in the mid-fifties, Paul Bley immediately hired him and Carla was exposed nightly to ‘free’ playing, a powerful influence that was to affect her writing for many years.

Teodross Avery

Born: July 2, 1973

As a musician, Dr. Teodross Avery stands as one who defines live music—best experienced front row, and full throttle. His commanding presence, on stage and off, reflects his musical ingenuity and skill. With an outstanding pedigree, both professionally and academically, Teodross is a saxophonist to watch, as evidenced by many of today’s biggest names in music relying on his wide musical reach. While growing up in Oakland and Vacaville, California, Teodross’ parents exposed him to a wide range of music including traditional Eastern and Western African music, Soul, Rock, and Jazz. At ten, his father started him with classical guitar lessons

Sam Bevan

Born: December 13, 1974

Since moving to San Francisco in 1999, Sam Bevan has established himself as one of the most versatile and creative bassists in the Bay Area. Bevan is able to canvas a large musical landscape where jazz, funk, r&b, folk and Afro-Cuban disciplines joyously intermingle. His sound is in response to the history of modern jazz, yet it’s his composer’s ear which informs his overall concept. Bevan explains, “Since I began my musical life as a pianist, including experiences composing and arranging for pop/rock, jazz and salsa bands, I have gained a much broader sense of the role of the bass. I am very content providing support and feel as a part of the rhythm section, as well as listening for appropriate moments to push the music into new territory