Jazz – Page 4 – ArtPower

Marquis Hill Blacktet

“His music crystallizes the hard-hitting, hard-swinging spirit of Chicago jazz.” —Chicago Tribune

For the past five years, 30-year-old trumpeter Marquis Hill has been invigorating the Chicago jazz scene with his sleek approach to modern jazz, which often incorporates elements of spoken word and hip-hop. Winner of the 2014 Thelonious Monk International Trumpet Competition, Hill has established his well-deserved reputation as a leading figure among today’s crop of adventurous young jazz musicians. With his longstanding quintet, Blacktet (consisting of alto saxophonist Christopher McBride, vibraphonist Justin Thomas, drummer Makaya McCraven, and bassist Joshua Ramos), Hill recently released his album The Way We Play, an homage to his formative years in Chicago through stirring makeovers of jazz standards.

Miguel Zenón Quartet

Multiple Grammy nominee and Guggenheim and MacArthur fellow Miguel Zenón represents a select group of musicians who have masterfully balanced the often contradictory poles of innovation and tradition. He is widely considered to be one of the most groundbreaking and influential saxophonists of his generation. He has also developed a unique voice as a composer and conceptualist, concentrating his efforts on perfecting a fine mix between Latin American folkloric music and jazz. Born and raised in San Juan, Puerto Rico, Zenón has released nine recordings as a bandleader, and will be touring his tenth and forthcoming album, Tipico, while at ArtPower.

Charenée Wade

This concert has been rescheduled to Sunday, March 19, at 7 pm. Our Box Office staff will reach out to reissue new tickets for you, or if you cannot make the performance, start the refund process. All refunds/reissues of tickets will need to be completed by March 1.

Question? Please contact us at artpower@ucsd.edu or 858.534.8497.

Charenée Wade is not one to hold back or let fear stand in her way. An award-winning young vocalist currently making waves in both jazz and soul/R&B circles, she is known for her expert vocal improvisational ability and her seriously swinging groove. Wade will perform tracks from her latest album—Offering: The Music of Gil Scott-Heron and Brian Jackson—which pays tribute to the socially conscious poet and musician Scott-Heron, and showcases Wade’s excellent storytelling and subtle vocal prowess.

Christian Sands

Named one of jazz’s future rising stars by Wynton Marsalis, pianist Christian Sands is a Steinway artist and three-time Grammy nominee. Through his abundant piano technique, Sands takes a fresh look at the entire language of jazz. Whether it’s stride, swing, bebop, progressive, fusion, Brazilian, or Afro-Cuban, he honors the past while providing unusual and stimulating interpretations for the present . . . and for the future. Armed with an extensive vocabulary of patterns, textures, and structures, he nonetheless maintains a strong sense of understatement, sensitivity, taste, and swing—hallmarks for as long as he has been playing. Sands states, “My music is about teaching the way of jazz and keeping it alive.”

Takuya Kuroda

Making his first trip to the U.S. just 13 years ago to pursue his dream of becoming a jazz musician, trumpeter/composer Takuya Kuroda is a forward- thinking artist with a bent towards mixing post- pop and adventurous soul-jazz. With his inventive compositions, which include everything from jazz, funk, hip-hop, and Afro-beat, he is primed to become a major voice on the 21st-century modern soul-jazz scene. A fixture on the New York scene for the past decade, Kuroda has performed with big league players such as Valery Ponomarev, Junior Mance, Greg Tardy, and Andy Ezrin.

Rising Sun is the perfect title for the Blue Note debut from Takuya Kuroda, who is perhaps best known for his inspired presence in vocalist José James’s band over the past several years. Friends since their student days at Berklee, Kuroda contributed significantly to James’s 2010 album Blackmagic, and his critically hailed 2013 Blue Note album No Beginning No End, a project for which he also wrote the horn arrangements. “No one sounds like Takuya,” says James. “His tone, warmth and most of all his storytelling have inspired me for years. His writing is soulful, modern, and effortlessly bridges the gap between jazz and soul, and between history and tomorrow.”

“A transcendent horn player “—Washington Post

“Kuroda pulls you into his world from the downbeat . . . It’s a world informed by jazz, soul, R&B, and especially Afro-beat”—DownBeat

GoGo Penguin

DUE TO UNFORESEEN CIRCUMSTANCES AND WITH GREAT REGRET, GOGO PENGUIN HAVE HAD TO POSTPONE ITS FALL 2016 TOUR. THEY ARE DEEPLY SORRY TO LET DOWN THEIR AMERICAN FANS AND LOOK FORWARD TO RETURNING TO THE U.S.A. IN 2017.

IF YOU HAVE PURCHASED TICKETS ALREADY, THE BOX OFFICE WILL CONTACT YOU REGARDING REFUND OR PLEASE CALL 858-534-8497.

It’s been an astonishing couple of years for the Manchester-based trio GoGo Penguin—from being shortlisted for the Mercury Prize to touring the world at venues such as Coachella, the Barbican in London, and Überjazz Festival in Hamburg to signing a multi-album deal with Blue Note Records. Predominantly an acoustic piano trio, GoGo Penguin’s music draws from many areas of contemporary electronic music, incorporating arcade game bleeps, glitchy breakbeats, hypnotic Aphex-style melodies, grinding bass lines, and a rumbling low-end. It’s where hard-hitting jazz meets electronica.