FREE! Brown Bag Jazz Hangs: Shelley Doty on Glenn Horiuchi

Join us for casual daytime talks and listening sessions with leading lights of the Bay Area jazz community. Bring your own lunch or order ahead from the JazzCaffè. Wednesdays at lunchtime! Free, drop-ins welcome.

Shelley Doty is a staple in the East Bay blues, roots, and rock scenes, dazzling on acoustic and electric guitar, singing with fluid grace, and writing songs filled with swagger, tenderness, and joy. Growing up in Berkeley, Doty listened primarily to jazz, but never imagined herself as a musician until her brothers turned her on to rock and roll. She went on to co-found the popular West Coast band Jambay, touring relentlessly and releasing three independent albums before it disbanded in 1996. In 1999, she won the Lilith Fair Acoustic Talent Search and closed the showcase playing guitar with Bonnie Raitt, Sheryl Crow, Sarah McLachlan, and Chrissie Hynde in front of 22,000 fans. Since then she has immersed herself in a wide array of projects, leading the Shelley Doty X-tet, playing with Sistas in the Pit and Skip The Needle, and co-writing and performing music for the animated science fiction film Strange Frame: Love and Sax (2012).

To order lunch from the JazzCaffè, call 510-654-0148 to place your order before 10:30am the day of the program.
Scan this QR code for the menu or visit actcatering.com/jazzcaffe.

https://concerts.jazzschool.org/free-brown-bag-jazz-hangs-shelley-doty-on-glenn-horiuchi/
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¡Sonidos Latinos! : Jackeline Rago - Venezuela 360

Jackeline Rago, cuatro, percussion & vocals
Anna Maria Violich, vocals
Carlos Caminos, guitar
Sascha Jacobson, bass

Venezuelan multi-instrumentalist, composer, and educator Jackeline Rago brings her immersive program Venezuela 360 to the Jazzschool, inviting audiences to experience her native country’s unique cultural landscape through music. From the spirited rhythms of joropo and merengue to the soulful tonada llanera, the infectious energy of calypso, and the powerful traditions of Afro-Venezuelan drums, Rago’s dazzlingly virtuosic ensemble explores Venezuela through its intoxicating rhythms and vibrant cultural heritage.

Based in the Bay Area, Jackeline Rago is a multi-instrumentalist, composer, arranger, producer, and educator specializing in Venezuelan, Latin American, and Caribbean folk traditions. She has performed and led workshops nationally and internationally across the U.S., Canada, Costa Rica, Japan, Spain, Finland, Thailand, Venezuela, Brazil, St. Croix, Barbados, and Ghana. Both Rago’s vibrant career as a performer and her dedication to preserving and promoting Venezuelan, Latin American, and Caribbean music worldwide have made her a leader in the music community, as an artist continuing and extending these rich musical traditions.

Come ready to move — a dance floor will be open for this performance!

https://concerts.jazzschool.org/sonidos-latinos-jackeline-rago-venezuela-360/
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Bay Area musician and educator Chris Trinidad, joined by ethnomusicologist Noah Rosen, hosts an informal presentation, salon, and performance to celebrate the intersecting timelines of Hispanic Heritage Month and Filipino American History Month. The evening explores real and imagined musical connections between the Philippines and Cuba, given the islands’ shared Spanish colonial history. What if Cuban musicians from the early 20th century heard the kundiman, harana, and danzas that came from the Philippines of the late 19th century? What if Filipino musicians danced to the Cuban orquestas, charangas, and conjuntos?

Chris Trinidad, electric bass
Joshua Icban, guitars
Unpil Baek, piano
Jimmy Biala, drums & percussion
Kristine Sinajon, vocals & percussion
John Calloway, flute & percussion

Light refreshments including lumpia, pancit, and Calamansi juice will be served!

https://jazzschool.org/concerts/filipino-american-history-month-salon-n-tagalog/
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Halloween with Henry Hung's Klaxon Mutant All-Stars

Henry Hung, trumpet and EFX
Kasey Knudsen, alto saxophone and EFX
Colin Hogan, keyboards
Eric Garland, drums
Jonathon Herrera, bass

Trick or treat! Celebrate Halloween with Henry Hung’s Klaxon Mutant All-Stars, an all-star Bay Area ensemble that conjures up 1980s nostalgia with a genre-defying jazz-meets-electronica twist. Come in costume as a “Klaxon Mutant”—whatever that means to you—to win a prize, and candy!

“[The Klaxons] represent the voracious appetite of the Bay Area jazz scene, where any and all sounds are fair game for sonic repurposing.” — East Bay Express

The music of the Klaxon Mutant All-Stars is the product of a new generation of eclectic jazz musicians living in a technology-obsessed, genre-twisting, multi-cultural world. The group brings together Grammy award-winning trumpeter Henry Hung (Stanley Clarke, Jimmy Cobb, Poncho Sanchez, Pacific Mambo Orchestra), saxophonist Kasey Knudsen (Charlie Hunter, Fred Frith), drummer Eric Garland (Will Bernard, Mads Tolling), keyboardist Colin Hogan (Peter Erskine, Too $hort, Mads Tolling), and bassist Jonathan Herrera (Stanley Jordan, Zigaboo Modeliste, Cathedrals), making their triumphant return to planet earth with a brand-new release, The Gr8tst Hits, Vol. 1.

The Gr8tst Hits, Vol. 1 takes an 80s cover album and flips it upside down and backwards, bringing nostalgic hits with experimental twists to the Jazzschool for a spellbinding Halloween treat. Come in costume and keep an ear out for a familiar lick – we suspect the Klaxons originated these tunes long before earthlings like Tears for Fears, Phil Collins, George Michael, and Stevie Wonder recorded their own distantly-related renditons…

https://concerts.jazzschool.org/halloween-with-henry-hungs-klaxon-mutant-all-stars/
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FREE! Brown Bag Jazz Hangs: Beth Custer on Carla Bley

Join us for casual daytime talks and listening sessions with leading lights of the Bay Area jazz community. Bring your own lunch or order ahead from the JazzCaffè.

Wednesdays at lunchtime! Free admission. Drop-ins welcome!

Beth Custer is a San Francisco-based Emmy Award-winning composer, performer, and bandleader. She has composed works for contemporary chamber ensembles including Left Coast Chamber Ensemble, Zeitgeist, Earplay, Turtle Island, and Kronos String Quartet.

Her music has been featured in theater productions at California Shakespeare Theater, Campo Santo, Berkeley Repertory, Magic Theatre, and Cornerstone Theatre. She has also composed for dance companies including Joe Goode Performance Group, AXIS Dance Company, Flyaway Productions, Ledoh, and Osseous Labyrinth.

Custer’s film and television credits include works by William Farley, Judith Ehrlich, Melinda Stone, KQED, CBS/Film Roman, and Koohan Paik. She has created musicals with writers Octavio Solis and Joy Cutler and recorded more than 50 albums with ensembles including Russian Telegraph, Eighty Mile Beach, Clarinet Thing, Trance Mission, the Beth Custer Ensemble, and Club Foot Orchestra.

Her many honors include an artist residency at Civitella Ranieri in Italy.

Order Lunch from the JazzCaffè
Want lunch waiting for you? Call 510-654-0148 to place your order before 10:30 am on the day of the program.
Scan the QR code for the menu or visit actcatering.com/jazzcaffe.

https://concerts.jazzschool.org/free-brown-bag-jazz-hangs-beth-custer-on-carla-bley/
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Dee Spencer feat. Melba's Kitchen Big Band: The Smile Orange Project

Dee Spencer, curator and organ
Robin Nzingah Smith, musical director, co-leader & woodwinds
Pat Mullan, co-leader & trombone

Deborah Tisdale, vocals
Georgianna Kreiger, Cynthia Mah, Jeunesse Monroe-Speed, Brenda Thompson, Katie Krolikowski, woodwinds
Marina Garza, Sue Leonardi, Jessica Hom, brass
Candace Dee Sanderson, brass, violin & viola
Arnetta Olden, guitar
Debra Lynne Temple, piano
Susanne DiVincenzo, acoustic bass
Nancy Geimer, drums

“… a crackling 14-piece all-woman unit …” — DownBeat

Dee Spencer and Melba’s Kitchen Big Band present The Smile Orange Project, a live performance of the score from the 1976 Jamaican film Smile Orange, composed by legendary jazz trombonist and composer Melba Liston.

The film is based on Trevor Rhone’s satirical play about the Jamaican hotel industry, with Liston’s score highlighting elements of 1970s soul, R&B, Jamaican pop, reggae, and calypso.

In this high-energy, joyful performance, Dee Spencer performs and directs her own arrangements of the Smile Orange score, accompanied by the all-woman big band, Melba’s Kitchen.

Dee Spencer is a San Francisco Bay Area performer, composer, arranger, and educator. Her piano and keyboard performance credits encompass a star-studded roster, including GRAMMY Award winner Ledisi, Beach Blanket Babylon star Renée Lubin, Tower of Power vocal sensation Lenny Williams, and jazz legends John Handy, Jimmy Scott, Louis Bellson, Clark Terry, Regina Carter, Jeff “Tain” Watts, and Bernard Purdie.

Her latest recording, Tranquility, was released in 2018, and she has also served as music director for the stage productions Dreamgirls in Concert, Hair, and Chicago.

Melba’s Kitchen is an all-woman big band offering up a tasty menu of music by Black women, shining a spotlight on the legacy of trombonist, composer, and arranger Melba Liston, jazz icon Mary Lou Williams, and their contemporaries.
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