Upcoming Concerts

2009 EARSHOT JAZZ FESTIVAL CONCERTS

October 17
Miguel Zenon Esta Plena Quintet
Byron Vannoy’s Meridian, The Triple Door, 7:30 - $22 general, $11 youth BUY ONLINE
The Puerto Rican saxophonist, a brilliant star on the international jazz scene, and the newest faculty member at the New England Conservatory, brings his explosive new group to the main stage for his second appearance during Earshot’s opening weekend. The members of the Esta Plena Quinet include the thoughtful pianist Luis Perdomo, dynamic bassist Hans Glawischnig, standout drummer Henry Cole, and the exciting percussionist and vocalist Tito Matos.

Drummer Byron Vannoy’s Meridian opens for Zenón. A local jazz fusion outfit, the band features Vannoy and several other talented artists, including Chris Symer on bass, Kacey Evans on the keyboard, Chris Spencer on guitar, and Eric Barber on saxophones. In 2008, Meridian won the Golden Ear Award for NW Recording of the Year.

October 27 Washington Composers Orchestra (WACO) Chapel Performance Space, 7:30, $15 BUY ONLINE
Robin Holcomb, Wayne Horvitz, and Tom Varner lead this adventurous 15-piece ensemble featuring top-flight Seattle improvisers and composers including Mark Taylor, Thomas Marriott, Eric Barber, Byron Vannoy, and Phil Sparks. Tonight, WACO presents an evening of music specially suited for the gorgeous acoustics of the Chapel Performance Space at the Good Shepherd Center. Approaching the traditional jazz big band as a “pocket orchestra,” the program will feature four extended compositions by Holcomb, Horvitz’s concerto for clarinet “River of Whiskey,” featuring guest clarinetist Beth Fleenor, and Chris Stover’s “The Murderess.” The program will also include the Seattle premier of “Laredo,” written for saxophone quartet by Holcomb, and commissioned by the Rova Saxophone Quartet.

October 29 Tom Varner Tentet, Andy Clausen & Sjenka Chapel Performance Space, 7:30, $15 BUY ONLINE
Rarely known for its fleetness, the French horn has a rather short list of jazz masters. Challenge most, and they’ll come up with only Julius Watkins’s name. And one of Watkins’s foremost proponents, Tom Varner (whose participation in the 6th annual Julius Watkins Jazz French Horn Festival on October 3 is eagerly anticipated at press time) presents his new tentet and the fast-approaching new CD, Heaven and Hell. Varner calls the piece “my big meaty work for tentet,” something he’s incubated and worked on since September 11, 2001. He notes that the piece mixes “My … hell … being in New York City on 9/11,” with that most incongruous thing, a sort of heaven, as he and his wife adopted their son in Vietnam a short 8 days later. That contrasting mix of elements and imperatives is a Varner specialty, something he did with magnificent ease on The Window Up Above, a take on the American song-book, in 1998. The free-ranging French horn, hardly something one associates with George Jones, made fabulous, slippery improvisational material out of, well, George Jones and other American staples on Window. The point? Varner’s got no fear of steep material, of flowing free, of going “big and meaty.” Varner’s discography shows him using his horn as if it were always an improviser’s mainstay, something that shone as it seemed to smear across notes, slowed brilliantly even as it sped (it is a French horn, after all). His 2001 look at Don Cherry’s Second Communion is nothing short of a master-work, a tribute, of course, but also something that takes the trumpeter’s clipped execution and makes it pliable and all-encompassing. That’s what Heaven and Hell promises, the orchestration of Varner’s elastic harmonics, his use of the ensemble as an instrument, his Ellingtonian ability to animate against the instruments’ limitations.

November 4 Joe Doria, Eric Barber & Byron Vannoy, Tula’s, 8:30, $20 Reservations: 206-443-4221
An organ trio for the ages – Seattle’s go-to Hammond man brings two of Seattle’s fiercest improvisers to the stage in a funkified format. Expect gripping organ-sax-and-drums music from the Northwest virtuosos Doria, Eric Barber (saxophone), and Byron Vannoy (drums).Doria’s fingers and feet work the keys and pedals in astonishing feats of comp and groove. Doria performs regularly with Michael Shrieve’s Spellbinder and with McTuff, also appearing in the 2009 Earshot Jazz Festival. Barber, born in Eugene, Oregon, took musical education at the University of Oregon and then the California Institute of the Arts. He moved from Los Angeles to Seattle in 2004 and is regularly featured in some phenomenal ensembles here. Vannoy is a local performer and educator. He attended the Berklee College of Music, Cornish College of the Arts, and the California Institute of the Arts. He teaches at North Seattle Community College, at the Seattle Drum School, and at Pacific Music in Redmond.