O’Reilly performs Saturday at the The Starry Plough on Shattuck Avenue and her band Aisling featuring O Nuallain, fiddler Darcy Noonan, … Continue reading »]]>

Jazz vocalist Melanie O'Reilly, an Irish immigrant, keeps one foot firmly planted on the old sod

Berkeley’s Melanie O’Reilly was born into a family of storytellers, and now she’s spinning her own tales, combining her passion for jazz with her birthright Irish culture. Since moving from Dublin to the Bay Area in 2003, O’Reilly and her partner, guitarist and neuroscience researcher Sean O Nuallain, have introduced a new vocabulary to jazz’s increasingly global lexicon.

O’Reilly performs Saturday at the The Starry Plough on Shattuck Avenue and her band Aisling featuring O Nuallain, fiddler Darcy Noonan, flutist Rebecca Kleinmann and Ami Molinelli on percussion and mandolin, an evening focusing on music from her 2007 album “Dust & Blood.” (She also performs at Freight & Salvage on March 10).

A gorgeous session recorded in California and Dublin, the album features O Nuallain’s delicate but rhythmically deft instrumental arrangements and O’Reilly’s lilting vocals. Together they have developed a singular body of music that weaves together several disparate currents, including the American Songbook, original tunes combining bossa nova or Celtic cadences with a jazz sensibility, traditional Irish material, and a generous helping of Brazilian standards by Jobim and Luiz Bonfa. She sings several pieces in Gaelic, including a piece she wrote with the celebrated Irish poet Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill.(...)

Read the rest of Melanie O’Reilly: Celtic cadences with a jazz sensibility (509 words)

By andrew. | Permalink | One comment |
Post tags: Freight & Salvage, Melanie O’Reilly, Sean O Nuallain, Starry Plough

Nell Robinson’s annual Soldier Stories Benefit Concert includes an art/photography exhibit, an art workshop and a live and silent auction.

Nell Robinson will be joined by musicians Jim Nunally, Joe Craven, Keith Little and Chuck Ervin for an evening of Americana string band … Continue reading »]]>

Berkeley singer Nell Robinson has organized tonight's benefit concert for veterans

Tonight, on Veterans’ Day, a concert at Berkeley’s Freight & Salvage, organized by Berkeley resident Nell Robinson, offers the opportunity to enjoy great music while helping a non-profit which provides support for Iraq and Afghanistan veterans, service members and their families.

Nell Robinson’s annual Soldier Stories Benefit Concert includes an art/photography exhibit, an art workshop and a live and silent auction.

Nell Robinson will be joined by musicians Jim Nunally, Joe Craven, Keith Little and Chuck Ervin for an evening of Americana string band music reflecting soldier stories from before the American Revolution to the current day, with a guest appearance by the Soldier Band (musician-veterans).(...)

Read the rest of On Veterans’ Day, a Berkeley concert to support soldiers (192 words)

By Tracey Taylor. | Permalink | No comment |
Post tags: Freight & Salvage, Nell Robinson, Soldier Stories Benefit Concert

Over the past three decades Berkeley tenor saxophonist George Brooks has carved a singular musical niche through his collaborations with the some of classical Indian music’s most celebrated artists. His latest project, Global Harmony, expands on his Indo-jazz vision by incorporating rhythms and cadences from North Africa and the Middle East.

Performing Sunday at Freight & Salvage, Global … Continue reading »]]>

Berkeley-based Georges Brooks

Click on this link to listen to “Better Than Coffee” from the album ‘Elements” while you read our review.

Over the past three decades Berkeley tenor saxophonist George Brooks has carved a singular musical niche through his collaborations with the some of classical Indian music’s most celebrated artists. His latest project, Global Harmony, expands on his Indo-jazz vision by incorporating rhythms and cadences from North Africa and the Middle East.

Performing Sunday at Freight & Salvage, Global Harmony is an improvisational supergroup that brings together a far-flung collection of masters. From New York there’s Glen Velez, a pioneering frame drum maestro, and vocalist Lori Cotler, who has honed a jazz-laced approach informed by South Indian vocal percussion (konnakol). Hailing from South India are Toronto-based mridangam virtuoso Trichy Sankaran, a superlative accompanist and scholar steeped in the Pudukkottai school of percussion, and Chennai’s Ravikiran on the 21-string fretless lute, or chitravina.

“It’s one of these situations where people are situated in different parts of the planet, and due to wonders of technology we’re able to share music, email MP3s, and think about what each person has been doing,” says Brooks from his West Berkeley studio. “Two weeks ago, Ravikiran was in the South Bay so we had a rehearsal with just the two of us. He’s a composer who also writes for orchestra, and his sense of composition and form are flexible and adventurous, so when I show him one of my compositions, he can think about it as a baseline for improvisation.”(...)

Read the rest of Out in Berkeley: George Brooks and Global Harmony (528 words)

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Post tags: Freight & Salvage, George Brooks, Global Harmony

Maintaining smooth sailing in any creative endeavor involving 55 people is no easy feat.

After a quarter century, however, the ensemble has learned a little something about coexistence and how to gracefully elide fundamental differences. A shared sense of devotion to the spiritually charged African-American art form is the force that seamlessly melds a multi-generational cast representing an array … Continue reading »]]>

The Oakland Interfaith Gospel Choir

In the Oakland Interfaith Gospel Choir, the glorious harmonies on stage flow directly from the harmonious vibe off the bandstand.

Maintaining smooth sailing in any creative endeavor involving 55 people is no easy feat.

After a quarter century, however, the ensemble has learned a little something about coexistence and how to gracefully elide fundamental differences. A shared sense of devotion to the spiritually charged African-American art form is the force that seamlessly melds a multi-generational cast representing an array of races, religions and creeds.

A few ground rules help too.

“We agree to disagree on things. It sounds easy, but it’s not,” says the choir’s founding director, Terrance Kelly, who leads the ensemble Sunday at Freight & Salvage in a concert celebrating release of the “Hear My Prayer,” the OIGC’s fifth album.(...)

Read the rest of The It List: Oakland Gospel Choir, pianist Michael Wolff (652 words)

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Post tags: Freight & Salvage, Jazzschool, Michael Wolff, Oakland Interfaith Gospel Choir, Sanville Institute

When Hilary Perkins was trying to think of what she could give to her husband as a 5th wedding anniversary present, she was stumped. Her spouse, Skip Battle, was an extremely successful businessman who had almost anything he could want, so no simple trinket would do.

Perkins decided she would sing him a song, even though she was so unsure of her voice she generally only sang out loud in her car. She selected the song “Forever … Continue reading »]]>

When Hilary Perkins was trying to think of what she could give to her husband as a 5^th wedding anniversary present, she was stumped. Her spouse, Skip Battle, was an extremely successful businessman who had almost anything he could want, so no simple trinket would do.

Perkins decided she would sing him a song, even though she was so unsure of her voice she generally only sang out loud in her car. She selected the song “Forever & Ever, Amen,” by Randy Travis and belted it out in front of the group of friends who had gathered for the occasion.

“You have never seen Skip Battle look more shocked and surprised,” said Perkins. “He was floored. He loved it and got up and finished it with me.”

Perkins was even more surprised than Battle. While she had been terrified before her performance began, once she was on stage she found herself having more fun than she had had in years.(...)

Read the rest of Nell Robinson: A little bit of Berkeley bluegrass (463 words)

By Frances Dinkelspiel. | Permalink | One comment |
Post tags: Freight & Salvage, Hilary Perkins, Nell Robinson, Skip Battle

The Junius Courtney Big Band might be a ghost orchestra, but it’s spirited … Continue reading »]]>

The Junius Courtney Big Band

When an ensemble keeps performing after the death of its namesake leader, it’s known as a ghost band. Though descriptive rather than pejorative, the term often carries a whiff of the dismissive, as if a musical legacy should be interred with its creator (things work differently in the world of dance, where no one seems interested in tossing dirt on the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater).

The Junius Courtney Big Band might be a ghost orchestra, but it’s spirited in all the right ways. Rather than coasting on the affection and respect earned by the late New Orleans-born, Berkeley trumpeter and founder, the JCBB continues to thrive with an expanding book of sophisticated arrangements. An East Bay institution since the mid-1960s, the band presents its latest project, a celebration of seminal jazz pianist Earl “Fatha” Hines, Saturday at Freight & Salvage.

With Junius’s son, drummer Nat Courtney, leading the 18-piece orchestra and lyrical trumpeter George Spencer serving as music director, the JCBB features a bevy of veteran improvisers with longstanding ties to the ensemble. Bassist Terry Hilliard, a Bay Area jazz hero who provided the clave pulse on Cal Tjader’s Latin jazz classic “Soul Sauce,” propels the orchestra with a buoyant groove. Trumpeter Frank Fisher and pianist Roberta Mandel both started performing with Junius Courtney in the 1960s.

The addition of stylish San Francisco vocalist Denise Perrier, who joins the JCBB at the Freight, has also energized the band. A Louisiana native who grew up in Albany, Perrier has spent much of her five-decade career performing internationally since Louis Armstrong discovered her as a teenager in the 1950s. She’s a polished song stylist who can deliver the blues with authority and interpret standards with knowing wit, and she never sounds better than when accompanied by a dynamic orchestra.

Tammy Hall-Hawkins ably handles the piano chair. Best known as a consummate accompanist for vocalists like Perrier, Kim Nalley, Pamela Rose, Rhonda Benin, Linda Tillery, Frankye Kelly and Veronica Klaus, she’s a dynamo who can dig into Hines’s patented horn-like approach to the piano.

The tribute to Hines couldn’t be more appropriate. A jazz giant who made first his mark in the mid 1920s through a series of classic encounters with Louis Armstrong (their 1928 duet “Weatherbird” ranks among the five most important jazz recordings ever), Hines led an influential big band in Chicago’s mobbed up Grand Terrace Ballroom throughout the 1930s. During the war years he took his band on the road, and it served as an essential bebop incubator, boasting a cast of brilliant young innovators such as Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Sarah Vaughan, Billy Eckstine and Wardell Gray. Though he toured with his old friend in the Louis Armstrong All-Stars from 1948-51, Hines reputation was fading as the jazz scene changed.

By the end of the 1950s, he was living in Oakland, largely underappreciated as one of jazz’s most powerful and influential improvisers. Jazz writer Stanley Dance helped engineer his resurgence with a series of solo recitals in New York City in 1964, and Hines started recording prolifically. His reputation restored, he was hailed by his fellow piano greats such as Horace Silver, Count Basie and Errol Garner as the jazz’s foremost piano patriarch.

Based in the East Bay until his death in 1983, Hines was dedicated to music education. A UC Berkeley Regents Lecturer in 1979, he left part of his estate to support aspiring students in Cal’s Young Musicians Program, which provides free conservatory training to youngsters from low-income families. Hines’ musical archive has become the crown jewel of the Jean Gray Hargrove Music Library’s Archive of African American Music.

Andrew Gilbert lives in west Berkeley and covers music and dance for the San Jose Mercury News, Contra Costa Times, Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe and KQED’s California Report.

To find out about more events in Berkeley and nearby, bookmark Berkeleyside’s recently launched Events Calendar. We also encourage you to submit your own events.

By andrew. | Permalink | No comment |
Post tags: Freight & Salvage, Junius Courtney Big Band

Launched about 17 years ago with bassist Dan Seamans and drummer Tom Hassett, the group brings the same gruff, unfussy eloquence to tunes by Hank Williams and Herbie Nichols, Billy Strayhorn and Nino Rota, Irving Berlin and Joni Mitchell, Beck and Bjork.

While focusing more on original material these days, Greenlief launched the stripped-down ensemble as a vehicle to investigate material outside the standard … Continue reading »]]>

Phillip Greenlief and the Lost Trio: performing at Berkeley Arts Festival Friday

Few bands in jazz find musical pay dirt as consistently as Phillip Greenlief’s Lost Trio.

Launched about 17 years ago with bassist Dan Seamans and drummer Tom Hassett, the group brings the same gruff, unfussy eloquence to tunes by Hank Williams and Herbie Nichols, Billy Strayhorn and Nino Rota, Irving Berlin and Joni Mitchell, Beck and Bjork.

While focusing more on original material these days, Greenlief launched the stripped-down ensemble as a vehicle to investigate material outside the standard jazz repertoire, whether the source was Tin Pan Alley, Nashville, or Iceland. It’s a loose-limbed combo marked by an off-the-cuff poetic sensibility, full of earthy humor and soaring lyricism.

“The challenge is how can we arrange these tunes in a way that’s interesting,” Greenlief says. “That’s what we’ve really been trying to work on the last couple of years, to get past convention of head, sax solo, bass solo, out. It seems like because of our repertoire we’ve somehow developed a sound that’s unique, if that’s possible in this music.”

Performing Friday night as part of the Berkeley Arts Festival, the Lost Trio celebrates the release of the group’s fifth album, “Mysterious Toboggan,” on Greenlief’s invaluable label Evander Music. A stellar cast of improvisers will be joining the trio throughout the evening, including Santa Cruz-raised, Brooklyn-based vocalist Sasha Dobson, Nice Guy Trio trumpeter 
Darren Johnston, Berkeley guitar explorer
 John Schott, invaluable reed expert Cory Wright, and electronics wizard Tim Perkis.(...)

Read the rest of Out in Berkeley: Phillip Greenlief’s Lost Trio, and more (196 words)

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Post tags: Berkeley Arts Festival, Freight & Salvage, La Pena, Linda Tillery and the Cultural Heritage Choir, Lost Trio, Orquesta la Moderna Tradición, Pacific Film Archive, Phillip Greenlief

Citizen reporter and self-described “construction spy” Sandy Friedland sends us this photo of the former Freight & Salvage space at 1111 Addison Street, and says a fencing, yoga and dance studio is on its way. “EDA January, 2012.”

By Tracey Taylor. | Permalink | 6 comments | Post tags: Freight & Salvage

In the mid-1970s, Berkeley High was brimming with so many ambitious and talented jazz musicians that Peter Apfelbaum launched his stylistically expansive 17-piece Hieroglyphics Ensemble by drawing on the ranks of his fellow students.

Saxophonist Jessica Fuchs Jones was part of that ferociously creative scene, and since her start with the Hieroglyphics she’s continued to develop into a staggeringly accomplished improviser. Versed in various free-jazz idioms through her work with jazz giants like Joseph Jarmen, Cecil Taylor and Don Cherry, she’s also fluent … Continue reading »]]>

Jessica Jones and Mark Taylor play The Freight Saturday

By Andrew Gilbert

In the mid-1970s, Berkeley High was brimming with so many ambitious and talented jazz musicians that Peter Apfelbaum launched his stylistically expansive 17-piece Hieroglyphics Ensemble by drawing on the ranks of his fellow students.

Saxophonist Jessica Fuchs Jones was part of that ferociously creative scene, and since her start with the Hieroglyphics she’s continued to develop into a staggeringly accomplished improviser. Versed in various free-jazz idioms through her work with jazz giants like Joseph Jarmen, Cecil Taylor and Don Cherry, she’s also fluent in tightly structured postbop styles and various Afro-Caribbean rhythmic systems.

Since the late 1990s Jones has been based in Brooklyn with her husband and co-bandleader, saxophonist and fellow Berkeley High alum Tony Jones. For her appearance Saturday at Freight & Salvage however she’s performing with French horn master Mark Taylor, a longtime collaborator who played on her excellent albums “Nod” and “Word” (both on New Artist Records).(...)

Read the rest of Out in Berkeley: Jessica Jones and Mark Taylor (111 words)

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Post tags: Freight & Salvage, Jessica Jones, Mark Taylor