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Sunday night Earshot Jazz presented Bill Frisell in his second appearance at this year’s Festival at  Jones Playhouse Theater UW. This time he played with  in-demand young bassist Luke Bergman and New York/Seattle drummer, Ted Poor, both of whom range from the most subtle to the thunderous. All three now on the UW jazz faculty.

Here is a link to the Earshot Jazz Festival website  schedule for the rest of the Festival.

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Sunday night at Poncho Hall at Cornish College, The Earshot Jazz Festival presented the Kora Band. Drawing well-deserved attention far from its Portland/Seattle roots, this ensemble combines elements of jazz and West African music – pianist Andrew Oliver, kora player Kane Mathis, drummer Mark DiFlorio, trumpeter Chad McCullough, and bassist Brady Millard-Kish.

Here is a link to the Earshot Jazz Festival website  schedule for the rest of the Festival.

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Seattle’s hippest and most elegant jazz mainstay Marc Seales celebrated a new CD release in this Earshot Jazz Festival presentation at Tula’s on Friday night to a packed house. The music was great.

Here is a link to the Earshot Jazz Festival website  schedule for the rest of the Festival.

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Also on Saturday night Earshot Jazz presented the Jon Pugh Quartet at Tula’s,a stylish cornet with Seattle legends Bill Anschell, Chuck Deardorf, and Mark Ivester

Here is a link to the Earshot Jazz Festival website  schedule for the rest of the Festival.

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Saturaday and Sunday nights the 2013 Earshot Jazz Festival presented the Seattle Repertory Jazz Orchestra: Take Five: Remembering Dave Brubeck
The region’s all-star jazz aggregation pays tribute to pioneering pianist and composer Dave Brubeck in a concert exploring his long, astounding career. Take Five has been the best-selling jazz hit of all time, and is just one of the many Brubeck chart-toppers you will hear in this concert, including Blue Rondo à la Turk, The Duke, and In Your Own Sweet Way.
Here is a link to the Earshot Jazz Festival website  schedule for the rest of the Festival.

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The Earshot Jazz Festival presented the Manhattan Transfer at the Triple Door on Friday through Sunday. For 40 years, Manhattan Transfer has been at the forefront of harmony vocal quartets. With worldwide sales in the millions, Grammy Awards by the dozen, and numerous sold-out world tours, its members continue to prove their uncanny knack for being ahead of the times.

Here is a link to the Earshot Jazz Festival website  schedule for the rest of the Festival.

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The UW School of Music and Earshot Jazz presented renowned guitarist Bill Frisell in an evening of duo and trio performances with trumpeter Cuong Vu and pianist Robin Holcomb in this Earshot Jazz Festival event celebrating Frisell’s appointment as affiliate professor of music in the UW Jazz Studies program. this was the first of four appearances by Frisell in the 2013 Earshot Jazz Festival.

 

Here is a link to the Earshot Jazz Festival website  schedule for the rest of the Festival.

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Brooklyn-based composer Darcy James Argue, a five-time winner of the Downbeat Critics Poll, credited with “making big band cool again”, lead the Cornish Contemporary Big Band in a concert of his compositions.on thursday night at Poncho Hall in as part of the offerings of the 2013 Earshot Jazz Festival.
Active in New York with his 18-piece ensemble Secret Society since 2005, Vancouver native Darcy James Argue first gained international recognition with his widely acclaimed 2009 debut, Infernal Machines (New Amsterdam Records), which appeared on over 100 best-of-the-year lists, earned Grammy and Juno nominations, and quickly made him one of the most talked-about musicians in jazz. In addition to appearances at venues ranging from jazz and rock clubs to such prestigious theaters as the Bimhuis, Merkin Hall, and the Kennedy Center, the group has also performed at the Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto, and Vancouver Jazz Festivals, the Ecstatic Music Festival, the London Jazz Festival, the Moers Festival, New York’s Winter Jazzfest, the Newport Jazz Festival, and Brazil’s BMW Jazz Festival. Argue premiered his latest project, Brooklyn Babylon, an innovative multimedia collaboration with graphic artist Danijel Zezelj, over the course of four nights at Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Next Wave Festival in 2011, and has recorded the music for a 2013 release. Argue’s awards include the BMI Jazz Composers’ Workshop Charlie Parker Composition Prize and SOCAN’s Hagood Hardy Award. He has received commissions from the Danish Radio Big Band, the Hard Rubber Orchestra, the West Point Jazz Knights, the Orquestra Jazz de Matosinhos, the Jazz Gallery, the Manhattan New Music Project, and the Jerome Foundation, as well as grants and fellowships from New Music USA, the Aaron Copland Fund for Music, the Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation, the Canada Council for the Arts, and the MacDowell Colony.

Here is a link to the Earshot Jazz Festival website  schedule for the rest of the Festival.
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Classically trained in Romania, pianist Lucian Ban, increasingly recognized for his modernist jazz, teamed up with stellar saxophonist Jorge Sylvester last Sunday night at Poncho Hall at Cornish College as Earshot Jazz Festival continues.
Lucian Ban is originally from Romania, where he grew up listening to both traditional and classical music. He studied composition at the Bucharest Music Academy while leading his own jazz groups, and notes that his approach to improvisation has been influenced by Romanian modern classical composers. Desire to get closer to the source of jazz brought him to the United States, and his ensembles have included many of New York’s finest players. Ban leads the super group ELEVATION, the ASYMMETRY Quartet, and The TUBA PROJECT. He co-leads with renowned bassist John Hebert the acclaimed project “Enesco Re-Imagined,” an ensemble that presents a radical reinterpretation of 20th-century classical genius George Enesco. Ban has released nine critically acclaimed albums as a leader for American and European labels. He performs and tours regularly with his projects and as a sideman in New York jazz clubs and European Festivals, and between 2002 and 2005 was a member of The BMI Composers Jazz Workshop. Ban also wrote music for more than 20 theater and dance productions, and has been nominated twice for Best European Jazz Musician by the Hans Koller Foundation. Lucian Ban has received his degree in Contemporary Jazz Composition and Arranging from New School University in New York, and he also holds a degree in Philosophy from Bucharest University.

A unique innovator in the idiom of creative music, Jorge Sylvester’s sound is reminiscent of another time in jazz history when artists like Dolphy and Ornette were exploding on the scene and experimenting with concepts that would ultimately revolutionize music at large. A throwback to the future, Sylvester has been on the edge of that scene since 1980 when he first came to New York City. His blend of African Caribbean rhythms with new music is what gives Sylvester his distinguished voice. An impressive composer and arranger, his music moves, entices and stirs the imagination. Born in Colon, Panama Sylvester attended the Panama Conservatory of Music and the University of Panama. He received a Bachelor of Science in Music from the State University of New York College of New Paltz in 1981. Here is a link to the Earshot Jazz Festival website  schedule for the rest of the Festival.

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