Charged Particles

Friday, October 13, 6pm at Copperfield’s Books | no admission charge |

Charged Particles is a trio that crosses stylistic boundaries and blends diverse traditions to create engaging new sounds. Fiery drummer Jon Krosnick is joined by Murray Low, a keyboard wizard with dazzling Latin-jazz technique and imaginative improvisational skills, and Aaron Germain, an inventive and sophisticated acoustic and electric bassist.

The trio’s repertoire blends jazz with elements of Latin music, funk, classical music, and other genres. The group’s original compositions are mixtures of complex orchestration and elaborate improvised solos. The band brings a similar approach to playing arrangements of tunes by other jazz artists and traditional jazz standards by the composers of America’s most popular songs from decades ago, each played with a new twist. The group’s small size allows for sensitivity and spontaneity among the players, making each performance an enchanting improvisational exploration.

Jon Krosnick is both a classical percussionist and jazz drummer. On the jazz side, he’s performed with the Harvard Jazz Ensemble, Silver Sax, Pangea, Lunar Glee Club, State of Mind, Ferric Fang, Bradley Sowash, Geoff Gallante, Chick Corea, John Patitucci, and his own group, the Jon Krosnick Quintet. His style reflects his primary influences on the drums: Peter Erskine, Dave Weckl, and Steve Gadd. Krosnick has studied with Erskine throughout his career. His drumming blends the incredible technique developed through his classical training with sensitivity to the harmonic and melodic talents of his fellow players, which creates an explosive energy that propels the Charged Particles trio to electrifying velocities.

Murray Low, a veteran pianist of the Bay Area jazz scene, has been playing, composing, arranging, recording, and teaching professionally for over thirty years. His fluency in all forms of jazz and its blending with other idioms has led to a multifaceted career spanning a wide variety of musical contexts, but Low is best known for his contributions to the Latin jazz, salsa and Afro-Cuban musical landscape. One of the premier pianists in that genre, Low was nominated as Pianist of the Year by Latin Jazz Corner in 2008 and for a Grammy in 2004 as part of Machete Ensemble. He has collaborated with ensembles that include Wayne Wallace’s Latin Jazz Quintet, John Calloway’s Diaspora, Jesus Diaz y su QBA, the Pete Escovedo Orchestra as well as John Santos’ Machete Ensemble. Low is currently on faculty at Stanford University, where he teaches jazz piano and ensemble performance.

Bass player Aaron Germain has traveled the world, learning from the masters. Spending his early years in the Northeast, he cut his teeth playing upright and electric bass in bands ranging from jazz and blues to funk, reggae, and Senegalese mbalax. Moving to the Bay Area in 2000, he quickly found himself working over time, sometimes playing two or three gigs a day. His repertoire of styles expanded to include salsa and Afro-Cuban music, Brazilian forro music, Caribbean steel pan music, Indian kathak, calypso, and dense, odd-meter jazz compositions. Germain likes to say that he’s picky about quality, but not genre.

Our Emerging Artist will be pianist Christina Galisatus. Christina began playing classical piano at  age five and has competed at a number of piano competitions throughout California. She also plays French horn and toured throughout England, France, Spain, China, Germany, and the Czech Republic as principal horn of the Peninsula Youth Orchestra. It wasn’t until high school that Christina began to study jazz, largely influenced by her father, Michael Galisatus, a jazz trumpeter and educator. She is currently a student at Stanford University pursuing a double major in Music and Symbolic Systems, and performs with both the Stanford Jazz Orchestra and the Stanford Afro-Latin Jazz Ensemble.

This free concert is presented as a collaboration between Jazz in the Neighborhood and Copperfield’s Books. We are grateful for the monetary support of  our members, supporters, and advertisers that make these concerts possible.

Free event at Copperfield’s Books, 850 Fourth Street, San Rafael