Legends & Lions showcase at 2024 Jazz Café @ Triumph
Final Week: Saturday Only
Our Jazz Arts Academy Student Showcase with Guest Artist Vibraphonist Joe Locke
July 27, Saturday night only at 7pm
Our Jazz Café remains a cultural magnet in the region and has been named a "Pick of the Year" by the Tri-City News. It is a great night out with family and friends or a fun date night with your significant other on a summer's eve.
Drop in for dinner and drinks, or begin your night on the town at a "big-city" style jazz club atmosphere at a fraction of the price. These will surely be the most exciting and romantic evenings you will spend all summer.
June 28 & 29: Warren Vaché Quartet
Warren Vaché is that supremely accomplished, versatile and rare performer who delights and astounds audiences all over the globe with his superb cornet, trumpet and flugelhorn stylings. Through live performances and recordings, along with stage, screen, radio and television appearances, Warren conveys incredible warmth through his burnished tone and intelligent improvisations.
He is a true jazz veteran, highly respected in the industry and has performed and recorded with anybody who is anybody and then some, including such luminaries as: Benny Goodman, Rosemary Clooney, Benny Carter, Hank Jones, Gerry Mulligan, Woody Herman, Ruby Braff and Bobby Short to name but a few. In Vaché, jazz has found a creator whose prodigious, hard-earned skills enable him to craft swinging performances of beauty, emotion and surprise. Over the years Warren has been a frequent performer at our own Jazz Arts Project concerts and events.
Eddie Monteiro plays an accordion that houses a miniaturized organ as well as synthesizer effects and, with a microphone attached to the top of the accordion and a vocalizing range that takes his voice from high trumpet sounds to dark baritone effects, he becomes a complete orchestra by himself. It is not often the accordion is the central instrument in a band, but, neither is it often that the instrument is played by such a master. Eddie Monteiro is the youngest honoree inducted into the American Accordionist’s Hall of Fame, and a NJ native.
Harry Allen has recorded over 70 CDs as a leader and many more as a sideman. Three of Harry's CDs have won Gold Disc Awards from Japan's Swing Journal Magazine, and his CD Tenors Anyone? won both the Gold Disc Award and the New Star Award. His recordings have made the top ten list for favorite new releases in Swing Journal Magazine's reader's poll and Jazz Journal International's critic's poll for 1997, and Eu Nao Quero Dancar (I Won't Dance), the third Gold Disc Award winner, was voted second for album of the year for 1998 by Swing Journal Magazine’s reader’s poll. The Harry Allen - Joe Cohn Quartet won the New York Nightlife Award for Outstanding Jazz Combo Performance of 2006 and was nominated for Best Jazz Combo by the Jazz Journalists Association for the same year. Harry also won the 2010 New York Nightlife Award for Best Jazz Solo.
Earl Sauls, bassist, has been a professional musician for over thirty five years. He has developed an original and highly musical approach to his instrument. During a career that has spanned over three decades, he has played with some of the all-time jazz greats, including Stan Getz, Pepper Adams, Howard McGhee, Woody Herman, Warren Vache, Warne Marsh, Chuck Wayne and many others. Noted for his fine sound he is featured on recordings by Joshua Breakstone, Rob Reich, Peter Prisco and others.
July 5 & 6: Aaron Weinstein & Friends
Aaron Weinstein was Called “the Groucho of the violin” by Tony Bennett, “a perfect musician” by jazz legend, Bucky Pizzarelli and “the most brilliant comic mind in his price range” by Joan Rivers, Aaron Weinstein has performed his unique mix of instrumental virtuosity and verbal satire at Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center, New York’s Town Hall, Birdland and The Blue Note. He has been the subject of profiles in The Wall Street Journal, Downbeat Magazine, JazzTimes, and The New York Daily News. Aaron was voted as the top “Rising Star Violinist” in Downbeat Magazine’s recent critics poll. He was selected to be the violinist to commemorate Jazz violin pioneer, Stephane Grappelli’s induction into the “Jazz Wall of Fame.” Additionally, Aaron has performed, recorded or written for artists as varied as Les Paul, Skitch Henderson, The Manhattan Transfer, rock guitarist Jay Geils, Michael Feinstein, Linda Lavin, Christine Ebersole and comedians Joan Rivers, Irwin Corey and Dick Gregory. Aaron has written and directed award-winning short films and has developed work at Second Stage Theater. Politically, Aaron is a bow tie rights activist. He is also lactose intolerant but can find at least one agreeable item on any restaurant menu, a feat he has called, “my greatest talent.” Aaron lives in New York City and sometimes writes about himself in the third person.
July 12 & 13: Jason Jackson Quintet
Jason Jackson has been one of the busiest, most respected trombone players in New York City since settling there 21 years ago.
Currently, Jason teaches jazz trombone at The Juilliard School. In addition to the two years he spent touring the world with Ray Charles, he has been the lead trombonist in the Dizzy Gillespie All-Star Big Band for the past decade and currently plays that part in orchestras led by Roy Hargrove and Charles Tolliver.
And on Mondays, his off-nights from playing in the pit bands of such Tony Award-winning Broadway productions as The Color Purple, Wonderful Town, Nice Work If You Can Get It, and Motown the Musical, he has been a member for the past 10 years of the Grammy Award-winning Vanguard Jazz Orchestra at the Village Vanguard.
July 19 & 20: Steve Turre Quintet
Steve Turre is one of the world's preeminent jazz innovators, trombonist, and seashellist. He has consistently won both the Readers' and Critics' polls in JazzTimes, Downbeat, and Jazziz for Best Trombone and for Best Miscellaneous Instrumentalist (shells). Turre was born to Mexican-American parents and grew up in the San Francisco Bay area, where he absorbed daily doses of mariachi, blues and jazz.
In 1972, Steve Turre's career picked up momentum when Ray Charles hired him to go on tour. A year later Turre's mentor Woody Shaw brought him into Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers. After his tenure with Blakey, Turre went on to work with a diverse list of musicians from the jazz, Latin, and pop worlds, including Dizzy Gillespie, McCoy Tyner, J.J. Johnson, Herbie Hancock, Tito Puente, Mongo Santamaria, Van Morrison, Horace Silver, Max Roach, and Rahsaan Roland Kirk. He has also performed with the Saturday Night Live band since 1984.
with an opening showcase set by
Jazz Arts Academy Students
Students from the Summer Session of Jazz Arts Academy wil perform a showcase opening set at Summer Jazz Café final weekend in July
All proceeds from this series help support Jazz Arts Project's head-start style music instruction and enrichment programs for at-risk and underserved youth.
And finally, as is our tradition each year on the final weekend of Summer Jazz Café, we present a concept which has become known as “Legends and Lions” in jazz. Students from our Jazz Arts Academy Summer Session perform an opening set followed by a set featuring master Jazz artist professionals, in this case Winard Harper and Jeli Posse. This is exactly what our organization’s vision is about; the pairing of young students with masters of the art form, giving them the opportunities and the spark that can ignite either a career path or simply an enduring love of the music that we honor and cherish.
Special thanks to these foundations for their generous support
