2017 October

Jazz Caliente

Friday, October 27, 6pm at Copperfield’s Books | no admission charge |

Join with us as we celebrate the 20th anniversary of Jazz Caliente. Founded by Lee Waterman and Tommy Kesecker in 1997, the band performs Afro-Cuban and Brazilian jazz featuring original compositions by Waterman as well as arrangements of jazz and Latin masters such as Miles Davis, Duke Ellington, Wes Montgomery, Tito Puente, and Sergio Mendes. Joining Waterman on guitar and Kesecker on vibes will be Alex Murzyn on flute and reeds along with bassist Bill Lanphier, percussionist Michaelle Goerlitz, and drummer Bill Belasco.

Trademarks of the Jazz Caliente style are tight arrangements and infectious grooves. Basing its chordal foundation on vibes and guitar produces a brighter tonality and allows more space inside the music than with a traditional piano-based format. Their latest CD release is Olhos Verdes.

Guitarist Lee Waterman also arranges and composes for the group. In addition to Jazz Caliente, he leads several other combos that perform in a variety of different styles. His classic jazz styles were developed through study with Warren Nunes, augmented by percussion studies for multicultural genres. Waterman has performed with sax great John Handy and has opened for many headliners, including Tito Puente and Pancho Sanchez. “He skillfully creates melodic statements that dart in and out of a variety of rhythmic contexts. His obvious affinity for Afro-Cuban and Brazilian rhythms brings a refreshing point of view to his Jazz-based music,” says KCSM’s Jesse Chuy Varela.

Vibraphonist and marimbist Tommy Kesecker has long delighted audiences with his virtuosic performances. In fact, he began his career playing drums at San Rafael’s Belrose Studio Theater for its Vaudeville Showcase. Since then, he’s has performed with Zakir Hussain, Larry Vuckovich, Jim Campilongo, George Brooks, Michael Feinstein, Diana Krall, Joel Gray, Echo and the Bunnymen, and Mannheim Steamroller. He co-leads the Klobas/Kesecker Ensemble and is an active music educator. Said Jesse Hamlin of the SF Chronicle, Kesecker is “a cross between Milt Jackson, a Jamaican steel drummer and a Balinese gamelan player.”

Alex Murzyn is one of the finest reed men on the West Coast. Playing tenor sax, soprano sax, flute, and clarinet, Murzyn has appeared or recorded with an amazing lineup of greats: Dizzy Gillespie, Freddy Hubbard, Arturo Sandoval, Stanley Clarke, Huey Lewis and the News, Bobby Hutcherson, Sammy Davis Jr., Pete Escovedo, Ray Obiedo, Ray Charles, the Temptations, the Ojays, Johnny Mathis, Tito Puente, and Tommy Igoe.

Bassist Bill Lanphier is notable for his mastery of a wide range of genres and styles: rock, pop, Balkan, blues, bluegrass, funk, fusion, latin, and jazz. He hit it big touring with Madonna, later touring and recording with the Rippingtons. He’s also performed with Tom Scott, Rickie Lee Jones, Michael Bolton, Kenny G, Art Garfunkel, and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, among many others. He plays both electric and acoustic bass as well as dabbling with his first instrument, the drums.

Drummer Bill Belasco has an energetic and propulsive style that is beautifully balanced by his impeccable sense of timing and sound color. His mastery of samba, bossa nova and baiao rhythms of Brazil, as well as many Afro-Cuban, jazz, and popular idioms has made him one of the top drummers on the San Francisco music scene. He’s performed with such diverse groups as Majestic Swing, the Sharman Duran Trio, the Dave Miller Trio, the Pickle Family Circus, and the Mike Vax Big Band.

To say Michaelle Goerlitz is a percussionist is to say: she plays congas, bongo, timbales, shekere, cajon, drumset, udu, bata, pandeiro, tamborim, repinique, zabumba, berimbau, surdo, cuica, dumbek and “auxiliaries” like shakers and triangle. She’s versed in Brazilian, Afro Cuban, Venezuelan, Peruvian and Middle Eastern rhythms as well as American jazz, R&B, and funk. She was a founding member of the Blazing Redheads and Wild Mango and has performed with a veritable who’s who of artists in the Bay Area. Goerlitz is a sought-after teacher and has the distinction of being the first female teacher at California Brazil Camp in 2004, and being named a Downbeat magazine Rising Star in 2007.

Sitting in for a few tunes as a JITN Emerging Artist will be vibes player Justis Jones.

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.

Copperfield’s Books, 850 4th Street, San Rafael — no admission charge

Le Jazz Hot

Thursday, October 26, 7:30pm at Piedmont Center for the Arts | tickets |

Back for their third appearance with Jazz in the Neighborhood is Le Jazz Hot, the quartet version of the Hot Club of San Francisco. Led by guitarist Paul “Pazzo” Mehling, the ensemble includes vocalist and rhythm guitarist Isabelle Fontaine, jazz violinist Evan Price, and Sam Rocha on bass.

Paul Mehling has been dubbed the godfather of American gypsy jazz. He discovered the music of Django Reinhardt and the Quintet of the Hot Club of France in grammar school, and decades later the music that took root in his young soul finally bore fruit.

Critics have noted that the music of Mehling and the Hot Club of San Francisco owes as much to 52nd street as gypsy jazz, a characterization Mehling doesn’t dispute. “We have a swing or die approach to the music that’s distinctly American. We’re trying to challenge the tendency to slavishly imitate Django’s style, without watering down the gypsy tradition or diluting the music. We bring out the visceral element of the music that Serge told me is so important. When I talk with gypsy musicians, they say that they love what we do because they can tell we love the music. If people dig our music, when gypsy bands come to America, there will be an audience waiting to hear them.”

Isabelle Fontaine was born and raised in the French countryside with the voices of Edith Piaf, Charles Trenet, and Yves Montand ringing in her ears. She originally had no intention of becoming a professional musician but when she started singing with a group of friends for fun, her talent was immediately recognized and her life took an unexpected turn. She spent the next twenty years singing and playing the snare drum to the jumping jive music of the 50’s throughout France, with detours to Spain and over the Alps to Switzerland. During this period, she was eventually drawn to the gypsy swing of Django Reinhardt and The Hot Club of France, and it wasn’t long before she picked up the guitar and applied her impeccable sense of rhythm to the stringed instrument.

Evan Price is a ten-year veteran of the world-renowned, paradigm-shifting, jazz ensemble the Turtle Island Quartet. During his tenure in Turtle Island, he gave over five hundred performances in concert venues from Latvia to Australia and had the opportunity to collaborate with many musical luminaries, such as Cuban clarinetist Paquito D’Rivera and pianists Dr. Billy Taylor and Kenny Barron.

In addition to his in-depth study of classic bass playing, Sam Rocha has absorbed the nuances of classic jazz tuba, cornet, and guitar playing, and he regularly performs on those instruments as well. Quickly becoming one of the rising stars of the traditional jazz and gypsy swing circuit, Rocha is known for his innate musicality and rhythm and for his inventive, melodic solos.

801 Magnolia Avenue, Piedmont
$20 advance / $25 day of show / $5 student rush

Charles Gurke-Marcus Shelby Quintet

Friday, October 20, 8pm at Community Music Center | tickets |

Bassist Marcus Shelby and sax player Charlie Gurke join with Max Miller-Loran, trumpet; Adam Shulman, piano; and Michael Mitchell, drums, to form a quintet for this engagement.

Charlie Gurke is one of the most in-demand baritone sax players in the area. He’s a regular in the Electric Squeezebox Orchestra sax section and has also performed with the Contemporary Jazz Orchestra, the Realistic Orchestra, and other Jazz Mafia projects. Gurke teaches Stage Band at Laney College and San Francisco’s School of the Arts and is the music director for We Players theater company.

In addition to being an educator and activist, Marcus Shelby is a bandleader, composer, arranger, and bassist, who has been a supporter of Jazz in the Neighborhood since its inception. Over the past 25 years his work and music has focused on sharing the history, present, and future of African American lives; on social movements in the United States of America; and on early childhood music education. Shelby is currently a member of the San Francisco Arts Commission. His recent work includes Beyond the Blues: A Prison Oratorio, an original composition for big band orchestra commissioned by the Yerba Buena Gardens Festival, which premiered in 2015.

Max Miller-Loran is a graduate of the Berklee College of Music in Boston. He performed extensively in the New England area in both jazz and hip-hop before moving back to his hometown of San Francisco. He studied with Greg Hopkins, Tiger Okoshi and Hal Crook. He currently performs regularly with Blind Willies, The Getback, George Watsky, Kev Choice and many others. He strongly believes that all musical styles are valid and teaches with this philosophy in mind.

Adam Shulman has been a staple of the San Francisco Jazz scene since he moved to the city in 2002. Before the move, Adam was a student at UC Santa Cruz where he studied with the great pianist Smith Dobson and the trumpeter/arranger Ray Brown. He received his degree in classical performance under the tutelage of the Russian pianist Maria Ezerova.

Born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, Michael Mitchell has found a new home behind the drums in the Bay Area. He is now a Teaching Artist for SFJAZZ as well as the Stanford Jazz Workshop, and the director of Oakland Public Conservatory’s Frederick Douglass Youth Ensemble. Mitchell can be seen performing regularly with vocalist and trombonist Natalie Cressman, Steven Lugerner’s JACKNIFE, and at San Francisco’s Black Cat as a part of the Black Cat Trio.

The Emerging Artists for this event will be young musicians from the SF Community Music Center Teen Jazz Orchestra.

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.

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

ART • EQUITY • ACCESS

Jazz Caliente

Le Jazz Hot

Charles Gurke-Marcus Shelby Quintet

Charged Particles

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