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Here’s a real treat for everyone, a long video from what I think was the last jazz gig of the year at the Red Poppy Art House. I shot this on December 29, 2007 using two tiny MP4 pocket cameras plus a field audio recorder from the back of the room (with permission of course), and considering how dark it was and how low budget my cams were, the final edit still came out pretty nice! The performance featured Marcus Shelby on bass, Matt Clark on piano, Jeff Marrs on drums, and Howard Wiley on tenor sax. Although Jeff was the main drummer for the night, the video features the one track that Marcus’s old friend Lorca Hart played on as a guest.
Please note that I’m trying out a new way of displaying video on my website that requires Flash 8, but also be aware that this is a huge video file, so it may require some patience while buffering. Thanks!
On October 19th, I was fortunate enough to be given access to make photographs of the Marcus Shelby Jazz Orchestra and the Jon Jang Seven performing as part of the San Francisco Jazz Festival. The musicians played an inspired show to a sold out crowd at the historic Great American Music Hall, and I had a great time listening to the live music and sleuthing around making the images you see here. I’d also like to personally thank Marcus, Kate, and SFJazz for making these photographs possible.
Two of the Bay Area’s most accomplished composer-performers present new works inspired by powerful women. Bassist Shelby’s “epic oratorio” (SF Chronicle) “Harriet Tubman: Bound for the Promised Land” celebrates the great abolitionist, while pianist Jang’s “Unbound Chinatown: A Musical Tribute to Alice Fong Yu” honors Yu, a groundbreaking Chinese American teacher in San Francisco.
Marcus Shelby brings deep social and political awareness to his large-scale, indeed epic compositions. His latest, which he will perform with his 15-piece orchestra plus four singers Friday night, is based on the life of Harriet Tubman, which he discussed at length with the San Francisco’s Chronicle’s Jesse Hamlin in a recent story available here.
Marcus Shelby Jazz Orchestra
Faye Carol, Kenny Washington, Jeannine Anderson, Joseph Mace, Vocalists
Dave Scott, Mike Olmos, Darren Johnston, Joel Ryan, Trumpets
Danny Grewen, Marc Bolin, Scott Larson, Trombones
Marcus Stephens, Gabe Eaton, Alto Sax
Evan Francis, Tenor Sax and Flute
Rob Barics, Tenor Sax and Clarinet
Tom Griesser, Bari Sax
Adam Shulman, Piano
Jeff Marrs, Drums
Marcus Shelby, Bass and Conductor
Jon Jang Seven
Jon Jang, Piano
Min Xiao-Fen, Pipa, Vocals
Jim Norton, Soprano Saxophone
Francis Wong, Tenor Sax and Flute
John L. Worley Jr., Trumpet and Flugelhorn
Wayne Wallace, Trombone
David Belove, Electric Bass
Jason Lewis, Percussion
Here’s a few photos I made while enjoying the Marcus Shelby Septet play as part of the Friday Nights at the DeYoung series a few weeks back. The series is always a good time, and there’s nothing quite like relaxing to great live music with a few cocktails on a Friday evening after work. This week, another local jazz band I’ve covered previously will be performing, the excellent Darren Johnston Quintet. So, if you’ve never attended before, this will surely be a good week for your first show. And did I mention that members of the museum get free drink tickets?
Adam Theis recently organized an early night of jazz music at Bruno’s in tribute to Miles Davis’s birthday. It was an ambitious undertaking that included some painstaking efforts in the charting department. With only a single rehearsal under their belt, a chunk of the Jazz Mafia crew, along with other talented local musicians (complete lineup below), took on the awe-inspiring 1950’s era Birth of the Cool album in full Nonet form.
The group played Boplicity, Budo, Rouge, Moon Dreams, Move, Venus de Milo, God Child, Israel, and Deception to an attentive and enthusiastic packed house. The only tracks not played from the original album were Jeru, Rocker, and Darn That Dream. You can learn more about the original groundbreaking album at Wikipedia, and please enjoy the MP3 audio and MP4 video samples of Move below.
Joe Cohen, Alto Sax
Charlie Gurke, Bari Sax
Eric Jeckabson, Trumpet & Flugelhorn
Jeff Marrs, Drums
Mike Olmos, Trumpet & Flugelhorn
Mike Rinta, Tuba
Marcus Shelby, Bass
Adam Shulman, Piano
Adam Theis, Trombone
A few weeks back, I was invited to record and photograph the Trumpet Supergroup playing live at the Jazz School on April 24, 2007. The group featured an amazing lineup of local trumpeters that included Mark Inouye, Mario Guarneri, Dave Scott, Erik Jekabson and Mike Olmos performing a wide assortment of pieces on flugelhorns and Bb, Eb, and piccolo trumpets. That’s five, count ‘em, five trumpets up front — all I can say is, “wow!” As if that weren’t enough, they were backed by the incredible rhythm section of Marcus Shelby on bass, Randy Vincent on guitar, and Jeff Marrs on drums.
Each one of these musicians brings a unique strength and talent to the trumpet that’s all their own, and listening to them all mix, match, and mingle throughout the course of the performance exemplified the deep range and diversity of styles they all bring to the table both individually, as composers and killer soloists, as well as collaboratively through awe-inspiring arrangements of the (mostly) original compositions contributed by each. This is another great example of a local group that doesn’t play together all that often, but when they do, it’s an event not to be missed!
Earlier this week, I had the opportunity to photograph the Marcus Shelby Jazz Orchestra performing live at Presentation Theater as part of the USF Black History Month series of events. The band played two sets comprising music from The Lights Suite, Port Chicago, and their current work-in-progress Bound for the Promised Land: Harriet Tubman — this was one of only a few opportunities for jazz fans to get a “preview listen” to this challenging new work.
The full, completed piece is set to premiere at the Yerba Buena Gardens Festival at 1pm on May 5, 2007. In the meantime, you might want to check Marcus’s schedule for more upcoming shows and educational events surrounding this new body of work.
You can click the thumbnails below to see larger versions of the pictures, or alternatively, click here to view a slideshow of the entire photo set.
We were lucky enough to attend the first public performance of a new exciting project being developed by the Marcus Shelby Jazz Orchestra as part of the free outdoor Yerba Buena Gardens Festival. The piece is currently a work-in-progress, and this was a rare opportunity for jazz fans to get a “preview listen” to this challenging new work. Marcus has been commissioned by the Creative Work Fund and the Committee for Black Performing Arts at Stanford University to collaborate with the Yerba Buena Arts & Events and the Museum of the African Diaspora to develop Bound for the Promised Land: Harriet Tubman, an original oratorio for jazz orchestra. The work, which is based on a book of the same name by Kate Clifford Larson, will tell the inspiring story of Harriet Tubman and will feature the Marcus Shelby Jazz Orchestra, members of the Glide Memorial Church choir, as well as several other well-known Bay Area vocalists. The full, completed piece is set to premiere at the Yerba Buena Gardens Festival in Spring 2007.
