SIMM Series @ The Musicians Union Hall
116 9th St @ Mission SF
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7:30 Alex Jenkins Quartet
8:30 Koskinen/Robinson duo
Heikki Koskinen - piano/e-trumpet, Donald Robinson - drums

Alex Jenkins studied music at CSUS Sacramento, The Ali Akbar Khan School of Music in San Rafael and Drummers Collective in New York. In Addition, He performs and records regularly, around California and beyond, playing a variety of music (on both Drum set and Tabla) including, Jazz, Rock, Blues, Fusion, Indian Classical and just about everything in between. Alex leads his own group called "The Alex Jenkins Trio" which continues to keep a very busy performing and touring schedule, playing more than 100 shows a year.
Currently, Alex teaches percussion at Skip’s Music, Sacramento, William Land Elementary School and at Howe Ave Elementary. In addition, he keeps a busy teaching and clinic schedule which include workshops and clinics for various schools such as CSUS, American River College, Cosumnes River College, California College of the Arts in Oakland, UC Merced, Wood Creek High School, Orange Open Middle School, Citrus Heights Elementary, Unitarian Universalist Church of Davis, The Drum Lab, Davis Waldorf School, Whitney Elementary and various music stores around California.


Heikki "Mike" Koskinen is a recording artist, composer, and educator currently living in San Francisco. Chosen in "Rytmi" magazine critics polls as Finland’s top jazz trumpet player in the 1970’s, he left his native Finland to study jazz at the Berklee College of Music in Boston. Heikki’s music career began in Finland with playing American Soul music as well as free improvised jazz, with musicians such as Edward Vesala, Juhani Aaltonen, and Heikki Sarmanto. Heikki is the recipient of several Finnish composing grants, recorded several albums, and won awards as an innovative children’s music teacher. His 1980’s Bay Area bands, with Heikki on trumpet, featured such musicians as Hadley Caliman, Steve Heckman, Mark Levine, Joe Bonner, Bennie Green, Larry Hancock and Michael Spiro. Lately Heikki has re-connected with his free improvising musical roots, especially with Bay Area sax player Rent Romus and the Finnish “Kellari (Cellar) Trio”, featuring reed player Mikko Innanen and bassist Teppo Hauta-aho. Heikki’s main instruments these days are piano, the Morrison Digital Trumpet as well as tenor recorder. Besides performing and composing, he teaches music in the Bay Area. For ten years he was coordinator and host of the local radio program, "Studio Finland" and he has been a key musical figure in the Bay Area Finnish community for several years.


Described as a 'percussive dervish' (Coda) Donald Robinson is a technical master of the drums. He is a stalwart of the of San Francisco bay area avant-garde jazz scene, playing and recording with many of the area's improvisational players, from saxophonists John Tchicai, Marco Eneidi and Larry Ochs to koto player Miya Masaoka and pianist Matthew Goodheart, and with prominent visitors like Cecil Taylor, Wadada Leo Smith, George Lewis, trumpeter Raphe Malik and Canadian pianist Paul Plimley. Much of this work has featured the combination of Robinson and bassist Lisle Ellis as rhythm section: 'the best bass-drums tag team on the scene' (Jazz Times). His longest musical association, dating from the 1970's, was with the late tenor saxophonist Glenn Spearman. Born is Boston, Massachusetts in 1953, Robinson first studied classical percussion at the New England Conservatory. During the early 1970's he served his musical apprenticeship in the jazz world of Paris, studying with Kenny Clarke and playing with Alan Silva, Anthony Braxton, Oliver Lake and Bobby Few among many others. He first played with Spearman as a duet partner during this period in Paris, an association which continued through various configurations and many recordings until the saxophonist's death in 1998. Robinson is currently playing in many configurations with a broad range of musicians throughout Europe and the US.

Cost: $10-$15 sliding scale

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