Faculty
in SFSU's Jazz and World Music Studies Program do a lot more than just
teach. Many perform around the world where jazz, an American art
form, is one of our greatest exports. You won’t have to go far
to hear some of SFSU’s outstanding jazz musicians this summer
-- you can catch them on Bay Area stages.
Pianist
and vocalist Dee Spencer, co-director of Jazz and World Music Studies,
performs with The Wizzard MC from 8:30 p.m. to midnight every
Monday at Rassela's on
Fillmore, located at 1534 Fillmore St. in San Francisco. Admission is
free to these open-mike
sessions where aspiring instrumentalists, vocalists and spoken-word artists
jam with the band. Spencer will also lead members of the Stanford University
Jazz Workshop faculty in a July 19 performance at the Stanford
Jazz Festival.
Tickets range from $14 to $16.
On July
31 at the Stanford Jazz Festival, alto saxophonist and Lecturer Andrew
Speight will perform with the Harold
Mabern Trio. Tickets are $24 to $26. Speight, whose free Sunday jams
from 4 to 8 p.m. at the Dogpatch Saloon on 2496 Third St. in San Francisco
have become a Bay Area jazz favorite, won the Australian equivalent of
a Grammy Award for Best Jazz Album of 1999. Speight will also participate
in the Stanford Jazz Festival's All-Star Jam Session on Aug. 6. Tickets
are $20 to $30.
Stick around
Stanford a few days longer and hear Lecturer Akira
Tana on the drums
with the Dave Liebman Quartet,
on Aug. 4. Tickets range from $22 to $24. Tana, who was performing with
the likes of Miles Davis and Thelonious Monk by the time he was a teenager
in the late 1960s, is recognized as one of jazz's most widely respected
drummers.
Tenor saxophonist
Hafez Modirzadeh, co-director
of Jazz and World Music Studies, brings his quartet to the
15th annual Comcast San Jose Jazz
Festival on Aug. 7. Admission is free. Modirzadeh is critically acclaimed for
his unique blend of straight-ahead jazz and traditional world music he
calls "chromodal discourse," which was the topic of his doctoral
dissertation.
-- Matt
Itelson
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