12/25/2023 0 Comments Sjz break room![]() ![]() Spellman NEA Jazz Masters Fellowship for Jazz Advocacy, isn’t on this tour. New Orleans alto saxophonist Donald Harrison, the Cooker who was awarded the 2022 A.B. ![]() “He makes the Cookers’ arrangements sound like one band, like we have one mind compositionally.” “David wants to have compositional representation from all of us,” the drummer continued. As the band’s primary arranger, Weiss adopts the pieces “to makes them more sparkling, more intense, clearer and sharper,” Hart said. In many cases the composers recorded their tunes previously with smaller configurations. Like the band’s five previous albums, 2021’s “Look Out!” features awe-inspiring group interplay on a program of original material. A respected arranger who leads several other ensembles, he wanted to create a showcase for veteran masters with significant portfolios of compositions. The band’s youngest member, 57-year-old trumpeter David Weiss, is also the head chef who first assembled the group for a concert at the 2007 Healdsburg Jazz Festival. They’re all distinguished bandleaders who’ve recorded extensively under their own names.Īt 86, bassist Cecil McBee is the senior Cooker, and he’s been a three-star Michelin player since he anchored tenor sax star Charles Lloyd’s quartet that earned international renown with “Forest Flower,” the million-selling album recorded live at the 1966 Monterey Jazz Festival. Hart and trumpeter Eddie Henderson, 81, made history in Herbie Hancock’s San Francisco-based band Mwandishi (the pioneering electro-acoustic ensemble that preceded the Headhunters). It’s certainly unexpected.”Īmong their formative experiences as young players Cables and tenor saxophonist Billy Harper, 79, toured with Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers. “I’m sitting there looking at the phone thinking, did he just say what I thought he said? I’m lucky and grateful to be playing at this age. “I’m 80 years old, so it was the last call I expected to get,” said Hart, who got his start on the Washington, D.C., scene in the early 1960s working with Shirley Horn. ![]() Powered by drummer Billy Hart, who returns to the Bay Area March 31 to accept an NEA Jazz Master award with vocalist Casandra Wilson and bassist Stanley Clarke at the SFJAZZ Center, The Cookers also play Yoshi’s Feb. 11-27 at venues around the South Bay, Winter Fest has at its home base San Jose Jazz’s intimate Break Room, where The Cookers perform Feb. It’s a bona fide, long-running band boasting a book bristling with compositions that guide and fuel hi-octane improvisation. With a lineup featuring two newly minted National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Masters, The Cookers is far more than an all-star aggregation. At its best, San Jose Jazz’s Winter Fest brims with legendary musicians who’ve played an essential role in defining and expanding jazz’s adventurous post-bop vocabulary. ![]()
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