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A look inside The Jazz Gallery

Posts by Kevin Laskey

Photos from the band’s August recording session. Photos and design by Tracy Yang.

This Saturday, The Jazz Gallery is pleased to welcome the Erica Seguine & Shan Baker Jazz Orchestra back to our stage for two sets of performances. The band has built a sturdy presence in the New York area over the past decade, developing a substantial book of tunes that reflects the composer/bandleaders multifaceted personalities. This summer, the band went into the studio to record their debut album—the album is currently in the editing & mixing phase, so stay tuned for news about its release.

In a previous interview with Jazz Speaks, Seguine & Baker talked about how they go about developing each composition. Seguine offered this perspective:

When composing, I try to tell a story. Things often need to take time to develop. If you try to introduce a theme and suddenly say “We’re going this way instead, or we’re going to do this whole arc in three minutes,” it doesn’t feel like enough time to develop. Even in a small group, soloists take their time developing ideas. Rarely do you hear someone jump in, then jump right back out. As a composer, regardless of the size of the group, I want to develop the progression of the story by giving each section the time it needs.

This patient sense of gesture comes across clearly in Seguine’s composition, “Leaves Swirling Through the Dusk Sky,” which you can check out below.

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Grégoire Maret and Romain Collin. Photo courtesy of the artists.

This Friday, The Jazz Gallery is thrilled to welcome Americana, a brand new project from harmonica player Grégoire Maret and pianist Romain Collin. The project celebrates the many strains of American roots music, filtered through the co-leaders’ contemporary sensibilities. So far, the duo has been joined in performance by guitarists Marvin Sewell and Ben Monder. Check out Monder’s performance with the project from last week’s Winter Jazz Festival, below.

For this followup performance at the Gallery, Maret and Collin will be joined by guitarist Nir Felder. Don’t miss this opportunity to see three top-notch musicians from diverse backgrounds dig through the gnarled and hardy roots of American music. (more…)

Members of the California State University, Northridge jazz program. Photo courtesy of the artist.

This coming weekend, Jazz at Lincoln Center is hosting the first ever Jack Rudin Jazz Championship. The competition features 10 acclaimed college jazz bands from across the country performing in both big band and combo configurations. But before taking the stage uptown this weekend, the combos from California State University, Northridge will perform a special concert at The Jazz Gallery on Tuesday evening with special guest (and SoCal native) Ben Wendel.

To get a sense of what the talented Northridge students can do, watch their big band take on Chris Potter’s knotty and athletic “New Year’s Day,” below.

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Photo by Kevin Matthews, courtesy of the artist.

This week, The Jazz Gallery and Jamaica Center for Arts and Learning’s Thursday Night Jazz series returns with a performance by drummer Jeremy Dutton. A Gallery regular and alumnus of our Mentoring Series, Dutton is now a highly sought collaborator, holding the drum chair in Joel Ross’s Good Vibes, James Francies’s Kinetic, and the Vijay Iyer Trio. Check out Dutton’s recent performance with Iyer on the Chris Thile public media program, Live from Here.

Last month, Dutton went into the studio to record a new album as a leader, so come out to JCAL in Queens to get a sneak peak at this unreleased music. (more…)

Photo by Kholood Eid, courtesy of the artist.

This week, The Jazz Gallery is thrilled to start 2020 with two nights of live recording with the Darius Jones Quartet. As a saxophonist and composer, Jones is hard to pin down, always swinging between diverse projects of varied sizes. On the eve of the 2018 midterm elections, Jones spearheaded a concert/community event entitled For The People at Roulette, featuring activist works including his compositions including “Being Caged in ICE” and “LawNOrder.” In 2019, Jones has been honing his flexible composition Cartilage in a variety of configurations, from solo performances to a quintet version at this summer’s Vision Festival, below.

Jones’s run at the Gallery this week will be recorded for release by Jimmy Katz’s nonprofit label Giant Steps Arts and features collaborators old and new—vibraphonist Joel Ross, bassists Dezron Douglas and Sean Conly, and drummer Kush Abadey. Don’t miss this latest installment of Jones’s searching, constantly evolving musical language. (more…)