EyeShotJazz | Jazz Photography

Last night, the Earshot Jazz Festival 2015 kicked things off with Thomas Marriott with McTuff at Tula’s. They are playing there again tonight. Looking forward to six weeks of Festival coverage.

Tough, sinewy funk-rock-soul-jazz: Hammond organist Joe Doria, guitarist Dan Heck, and drummer Byron Vannoy join trumpeter Thomas Marriott for two nights of downhome Seattle jazz.

Seattleite trumpeter Marriott relocated to New York in 1999 after winning the prestigious Carmine Caruso Jazz Trumpet Competition. From there, he embarked on three world tours with Maynard Ferguson’s Big Bop Nouveau Band and worked in New York and on the road with the likes of Rosemary Clooney, The Tito Puente Orchestra, The Chico O’Farrill Orchestra, Eddie Palmieri, and many others. Since his return to Seattle in 2004, Marriott has been the featured trumpet soloist with the Seattle Repertory Jazz Orchestra and has been a catalyst on the Seattle jazz scene. Marriott records on local label Origin Records.

Organist Doria learned piano from Randy Halberstadt and Dave Peck at Cornish College, plus some select lessons from Jerome Grey. Generally, he taught himself Hammond organ from listening to Jimmy Smith and Jack McDuff. Uplifted by a regular gig with Heck and drummer John Wicks at the erstwhile Art Bar in downtown Seattle, Doria developed his Hammond mastery. He’s been a regular feature in Michael Shrieve’s Spellbinder, a first-call local organist, and gigging mentor to local drummers D’Vonne Lewis and Tarik Abouzied, guitarist Andy Coe, and many others, in his weekly Tuesday hang with band McTuff at the Seamonster in Seattle’s Wallingford neighborhood.

Drummer Vannoy has performed and recorded with Julian Priester, Jovino Santos Neto, Wayne Horvitz, Ernestine Anderson, and Hadley Caliman. He holds an Associate Certificate in Professional Music from Berklee College of Music, a Bachelor of Music degree in Jazz Performance from Cornish College, and a Master of Fine Arts degree in Jazz and African American Music Performance from California Institute of the Arts.

Guitarist/composer Heck currently lives and works in Naples, Florida. He was born in Philadelphia and raised in eastern Long Island, NY. A graduate of Berklee College of Music, he has performed in Boston, New York, Paris, and Seattle, where he co-founded the award-winning ensemble Bebop and Destruction, of Seattle’s turn-of-this-millennium Owl n’ Thistle jam sessions.