Results for "san francisco"

Gary Zellerbach

Born: October 4

Gary Zellerbach is a popular Bay Area guitarist and proud fifth generation native San Franciscan. He received his first guitar on his 13th birthday and has been playing ever since. While in high school, Gary studied jazz guitar with noted local instructor Dave Smith and played in numerous blues and rock bands around San Francisco. Next stop was college near Boston, where Gary continued his jazz guitar studies with Andy Caponigro and famed jazz guitarist and educator Mick Goodrick. Gary had some great musicians as classmates, including pianist George Kahn and bassist/music editor Carl Sealove

Audrey Moira Shimkas

Born: July 23

The song is Audrey! Anyone who has ever watched Audrey perform responds to the openness and confidence she exudes as a vocal artist, to the rich warmth of her voice, the movement of her body, and the subtle emotional power of her authenticity. She has a tremendous amount of charisma. Audrey is a singer’s singer who takes risks. She surprises and thrills with notes that push a melody to new heights. Her unique style and choice of material is best described as eclectic, pop-jazz fusion. When Audrey interprets a song whether she paints a ballad story or kicks an up tempo variation; laments the blues or grooves a Bossa Nova; swings a standard or wrings out a soul oldie-the experience is always fresh and new. Long before Audrey thought about being a vocal artist, she recalls that at a young age she was mesmerized by June Christy in concert

Mo'Fone

Born: 1999

With its surprising and highly combustible line-up of two saxmen and one drummer, the Bay Area-based group Mo’Fone has thrilled audiences with some of the funkiest jazz—and jazziest funk—being played today. Powering its way through inventive high-energy original compositions, Mo’Fone explores the sonic landscape of its unique instrumentation with a relentless adventurousness, creating a huge sound that belies its compact size. Combining serious musicianship with an infectious sense of fun onstage, Mo’Fone also manages to groove with abandon while keeping miraculously in balance, as each member of the band pushes his instrument well beyond its role in a more traditional trio

Peter Welker

Welker, the only child of parents who were both working jazz musicians in New York and Boston, first picked up the trumpet at the age of nine. He credits his mother as being the major influence on his life and music career. "She really inspired me," Welker said. "Born blind, she sang on the coast-to-coast Camel Caravan show with Al Pearce and His Gang from 1935 to 1939.” After studying at Berklee College of Music, Welker moved to the San Francisco Bay Area. He led a sextet which was the house band at the famed Jazz Workshop in North Beach from 1961 to 1965 and featured piano player George Duke. He has toured and/or recorded with the likes of Van Morrison, Santana, Cold Blood, Jesse Colin Young, Buddy Miles and Dr

Kronos Quartet

For more than 40 years, the Kronos Quartet—David Harrington (violin), John Sherba (violin), Hank Dutt (viola), and Sunny Yang (cello)—has pursued a singular artistic vision, combining a spirit of fearless exploration with a commitment to continually re-imagining the string quartet experience. In the process, Kronos has become one of the most celebrated and influential groups of our time, performing thousands of concerts worldwide, releasing more than 50 recordings of extraordinary breadth and creativity, collaborating with many of the world's most intriguing and accomplished composers and performers, and commissioning more than 850 works and arrangements for string quartet

Dan Feiszli

Jaz Sawyer

Jaz Sawyer (with one “Z”) began playing drums at age of 2 in the Haight Ashbury district of San Francisco, California. His musical studies has taken him through the music programs at the Ruth Asawa School of the Arts, San Francisco Conservatory of Music, Stanford Jazz Workshop and The New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music. Jaz possesses an eclectic and refined personal style of drumming that stems from his deep roots in his Classical, Jazz, West-African and Afro-Caribbean musical training. Jaz has worked with many notable artists, including Wynton Marsalis, Abbey Lincoln, George Benson, Bobby Hutcherson, Jacky Terrasson and Dee Dee Bridgewater in some of the world’s premier concert venues, including The Blue Note, The Village Vanguard, Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, Kennedy Center and the Sydney Opera House.

Meklit Hadero

If Joni Mitchell were East African and met Nina Simone for tea in San Francisco’s Mission District, she might end up sounding like Meklit Hadero. Meklit is a true modern global artist: born in Ethiopia, raised in US and nurtured for the last several years in San Francisco’s richly diverse arts scene. Add in a warm and luminous singing voice and lyrical songwriting that moves from the starkly personal to the poetically metaphoric, and you have her entrancing debut full-length recording, “On a Day Like This…”, released on the San Francisco-based Porto Franco Records on April 20, 2010. While Meklit’s music is like a sponge soaking up influences from all over the world, in some ways she’s the perfect embodiment of the City by the Bay

Allison Miller

NYC-based drummer Allison Miller defies all boundaries bringing her individual sound to diverse types of music while preserving their stylistic authenticity. Allison goes from playing with legendary songwriting vocalists Ani DiFranco, Brandi Carlile and Natalie Merchant, to touring with avant- garde saxophonist Marty Ehrlich and legendary organist Doctor Lonnie Smith. She approaches each of these musical situations with her own stylistic identity and a creative, fresh and energetic approach. Allison was chosen as “Rising Star Drummer” in Downbeat’s 53rd Annual Critics Poll. Raised in the Washington D.C

Steve Bissinger

Born: April 9, 1964

Steve Bissinger is a Bay Area based guitarist, producer and sound designer for film and television.