With great pleasure, I have transplanted myself from one coast to the other, from suburban New York to Marin County in California, where I will be for the next eight months. So what follows is a brief and selective listing of musical events the Beloved and I might show up at . . . feel free to join us!
Clint Baker and his New Orleans Jazz Band will be playing for the Wednesday Night Hop in San Mateo on January 8: details and directions here.
Emily Asher’s Garden Party will be touring this side of the continent in mid-January, with Emily’s Hoagy Carmichael program. On January 16, she, friends, and sitters-in will make merry at a San Francisco house concert: details here. On the 17th, the Garden Party will reappear, bright and perky, at the Red Poppy Art House, to offer another helping of subtle, lyrical, hot music: details to come here.
Clint and Friends (I don’t know the official band title, so am inventing the simplest) will be playing for the Central Coast Hot Jazz Society in Pismo Beach on January 26. Details are not yet available on the website, but I have it on good authority that the band will include Marc Caparone, Dawn Lambeth, Mike Baird, Carl Sonny Leyland, and Katie Cavera.
A moment of self-advertisement: I will be giving a Sunday afternoon workshop at Berkeley’s The Jazz School — on February 9, called LOUIS ARMSTRONG SPEAKS TO US. Details here.’
And, from February 21-23, the Beloved and I will be happily in attendance at the San Diego Jazz Party — details here — to be held at the Del Mar Hilton, honoring guitar legend Mundell Lowe and featuring Harry Allen, John Allred, Dan Barrett, John Cocuzzi, John Eaton, Eddie Erickson, Rebecca Kilgore, Ed Metz, Butch Miles, Nicki Parrott, Houston Person, Bucky Pizzarelli, Ed Polcer, Chuck Redd, Antti Sarpila, Richard Simon, Bria Skonberg, Rossano Sportiello, Dave Stone, Johnny Varro, Jason Wanner. The sessions will offer solo piano all the way up to nonets, with amiable cross-generational jazz at every turn. In a triumph of organization, you can even see here who’s playing with whom and when, from Friday afternoon to Sunday farewell.
In March, the Jazz Bash by the Bay in Monterey . . . make your plans here!
And — a little closer to the here and now — if you don’t have plans for a New Year’s Eve gala, check out ZUT! in Berkeley. Good food — and Mal Sharpe and the Big Money in Jazz (with singer Kallye Gray) will be giving 2013 a gentle push at the stroke of midnight. Details here.
We hope to see our friends at these events!
May your happiness increase!
JAZZ LIVES 