Trio 3

(oliver lake/ reggie workman/ andrew cyrille)

When: Tuesday, November 3
Where: Flying Goat Café
324 Center Street, Healdsburg
Time: Two Shows 7pm and 9pm
Cost: Tickets, $25.00 (available now)

Healdsburg is once again very fortunate to be able to experience in a very intimate setting an all-star partnership of jazz masters, with the group Trio 3.  In an extremely rare West Coast tour, Reggie Workman, Oliver Lake and Andrew Cyrille will be performing November 3 at the Flying Goat Café in Healdsburg, as part of a tour which includes Santa Cruz, the San Francisco Jazz Festival and Earshot Jazz Festival in Seattle.

Trio 3 is a group where music is the leader. The unconventional collaboration of internationally recognized jazz masters, Oliver Lake (multi-reeds), Reggie Workman (bass) and Andrew Cyrille (drums), formed to unify the members’ creative energies and promote a single governing principle: organic improvisation. Everyone is a distinct soloist, but it’s definitely an unadulterated group-based effort. Open to infinite possibilities, Trio 3 mixes and explores different sound colors traversing the whole vocabulary of jazz to take the music toward the future.

Hear samples of their music with this MySpace player. (Please wait for it to load.)

And what a glorious jazz vocabulary they have! Collectively, the group  spans over 130 years of jazz history have playing with playing with pivotal artists of jazz and modern music including John Coltrane, Mary Lou Williams, Herbie Mann, Art Blakey, The World Saxophone Quartet, Lou Reed, Richard Muhal Abrams, Cecil Taylor and more.

Deeply rooted in tradition, these jazz veterans describe their sound as “futuristic music within the idiomatic continuum of jazz.” Like musical alchemists, Trio 3 boldly carries the music forward spinning 3-dimensional jazz, reconfiguring jazz conventions of compositions, harmony, meter and melody.

Trio 3 is also a band without borders. According to Lake, “None of us assumes the positions of a drummer or of a saxophone player or drummer. We’re one third of a unit that makes music and we’re each capable of taking responsibility at the time that it is needed to make that music. With that in mind and with that kind of mind our music becomes unique.”

As so it is with Trio 3 – leaderless and borderless, freely taking flights of fancy from ragtime to no-time, fiery rapid-fire ostinatos to slow blues and modal vamps, mixing original compositions with traditional jazz, blues, bebop and beyond – with their audiences along for the ride.

» Tickets available now! By phone at 707 433-4644

» More info on the web at TrioThree.com

Title: ”The Big Trio” w/Wayne De La Cruz
Location: Palette Art Café
Link out: Click here
Description: Wayne De La Cruz – Hammond B3 Organ
Paul Bannin – Guitar and Saxophones
Kendrick Freeman – Drums
Date: 2009-03-26

Wayne de la Cruz

A captivating versatile group of dynamic musicians with a repertoire that not only represents the organ trio genre but a full spectrum of jazz and blues.

Title: Benny Barth Trio

Benny Barth

Location: Palette Art Café
Link out: Click here
Description: Randy Vincent – Guitar
Chris Amberger – Bass
Benny Barth – Drums
Date: 2009-03-19

Belated Birthday Party Celebrating Benny’s 80th Birthday which was February 16th. Come and enjoy this jazz legend playing with his long time working trio.

See Benny Barth at the Healdsburg Jazz Festival on Monday, June 1

Title: Eric Muhler Quartet feat. Sheldon Brown
Location: Palette Art Café
Link out: Click here
Description: Eric Muhler – Piano
Sheldon Brown – Saxophones
Michael Wilcox – Bass
Brian Andres – Drums
Date: 2009-03-12

Eric Muhler

Eric Muhler’s chord voicings are his own, his improvisations are full of constant surprises and, although quite aware of the jazz tradition, he sounds unlike any of his predecessors. His writing is fresh and personal, evolving before listeners’ ears and expressing a wide variety of emotions and moods.

Title: BBC Trio with Bob Drew, Bill Fouty & Carl Vast
Location: Palette Art Café
Link out: Click here
Description: Bob Drew – Alto Saxophone
Bill Fouty – Bass
Carl Vast – Guitar
Date: 2009-03-05

The BBC Trio

The BBC Jazz Trio (sax, bass and guitar) plays mainstream jazz, Bossa Nova and swing, emphasizing intuitive ensemble music. Since 1984, the Trio (Bob Drew, Bill Fouty and Carl Vast) has continued to define its style and expand its repertoire, delighting audiences throughout the Bay Area.

Fortissimo! “Ah-go ee-lay ah-go! Ah-go ee-lay ah-go! Ah-go ee-lay ah-go-yah!”

Soon you will hear some 5th grade kids chanting that in a few weeks! In case you don’t know, here is my report on the 2008 OJB:

Operation Jazz Band is one of the key music education programs sponsored by the Healdsburg Jazz Festival. Today was Day 2 of Operation Jazz Band Week, which entails a group of Northern California jazz all-stars breaking down into band sections (percussion, rhythm, vocals, horns) and spending an hour a day in one of the Healdsburg/Geyserville 5th grade classes performing and telling the kids about their instruments, the history of jazz, how a jazz band works, and how many hours they practice a day.

I spent the morning being driver for the leader of Operation Jazz Band, Babatunde Lea. A jazz drummer and percussionist, Babatunde founded Operation Jazz Band with Jessica Felix, artistic director of the Healdsburg Jazz Festival, eight years ago. Babatunde has incredible rapport with the kids, animating the African, Latino, and American heritage of jazz for them. They learn about call-and-response, swing, improvisation, and many of the past and current masters of jazz. Babatunde keeps the kids involved, with call-and-response throughout his time, and works in the history of jazz from Africa to America, and music styles from chant to bebop in one hour flat.

In the afternoon I accompanied Art Khu (piano) and Dave Ewell (bass) to Geyserville, where they demonstrated, performed, and talked about the history and role of bass-piano rhythm component so critical to the musical idiom. The kids are uniformly impressed by the size of the acoustic bass, and how cool the electric piano is (no, we aren’t hauling around a baby grand …). Art and Dave reinforce the basics, and introduce the more complex elements of jazz.

Digital camera in hand, I snagged about 40 photos or so, and have posted them into a slide show montage:

This year Operation Jazz Band is Babatude Lea, Drums and Percussion; Dave Ewell, Bass; Art Khu, Piano; Khalil Shaheed, Trumpet; Richard Howell, Saxophone; Angela Wellman, Trombone; Ken French, Keyboards; and Clairdee, Vocals.

The Operation continues all this week, culminating in a free jazz concert for the kids this Friday at the Raven Theater. All of the 5th grade classes come, and the children finally get to see the whole band together, playing songs they’ve heard in pieces throughout the week. The greeting the musicians get as they take to the stage is like the Beatles playing in Shea Stadium in ‘65 – a roar that is heard to Geyserville, easily! Little do they realize that they are hearing literally some of the best jazz musicians in California!

For many kids, this is the only time they will ever hear jazz as a musical performance. Most of them hear it on cartoons, for commercials, background in restaurants, etc., never realizing their American musical heritage is there to explore and enjoy.

Operation Jazz Band happens because of the generosity of those who came to this year’s 10th Annual Healdsburg Jazz Festival Gala. Through the event and auctions, we raised $50,000, which directly supports Operation Jazz Band, Tacuma King’s Percussion, Song, and Dance Workshops – also happening now through the start of the Festival in June – and workshops with the Healdsburg High School Jazz Band. From one that has been privileged to help out with Operation Jazz Band, Tacuma’s class, and listen in on some of the workshops, I can’t fully express how cool it is to see children get turned on by great musicians playing great music. It is something really special, and if you ever get a hankering to volunteer to witness it, just call the Festival office.

But I’m not giving up my slot on the roster anytime soon!

Paul Tincknell, Volunteer