SF Jazz Collective

San Francisco Jazz Collective Ran into a friend the other day (another music nut) and we started chatting - I asked him, "Hey are you going to see Dave Douglas next week?" "Dave Douglas? Where's he playing?" "He's playing with Joe Lovano and Miguel Zenón, that alto player who was awarded a MacArthur Foundation Genius Grant last fall. And Robin Eubanks, the trombone-playing member of the Eubanks family who's been here umpteen times with Dave Holland. Renee Rosnes is on piano, Matt Penman on bass and Eric Harland on drums. It's the San Francisco Jazz Collective, an all-star group that puts other so-called all-star groups to shame." "What are you talking about? None of those guys are from San Francisco..." "Well, think about it like a brand-name - like One-hour Dry Cleaning... Actually it was put together about five years ago by the outfit that organizes the San Francisco Jazz Festival: SF Jazz. The founding artistic director was Joshua Redman who does live in the Bay area. Come to think of it, there still is a San Francisco connection, the group gets together there for a 3 week residency every year, where they workshop the compositions of a jazz composer to whom they pay tribute. That makes it quite a bit different than those all-star groups that fly in from different places, meet on stage and are just starting to build some chemistry when the gig's over. This Collective really digs into the repertoire. "Then they take it out on tour - they've interpreted work by Ornette, Coltrane, Monk, Herbie Hancock, and last year they did Wayne Shorter. This is the first time they've made it to Vancouver and they're doing the work of McCoy Tyner this year." "Heard anything about the tour so far?" "Yeah, read a review that raved about the show in Minneapolis this week, featured Renee on Fly with the Wind but really mixed up tunes from McCoy's book with other compositions from Douglas, Lovano and Zenón. And tripped over an interview with Zenón where he said '...the biggest challenge is to try keep the spirit of the original versions of the compositions, while at the same time reflecting the personality of the Collective. I really feel we get better and better at doing this every time we get together.'" "With all that, you know it's gonna be a great show..." The SF Jazz Collective [Dave Douglas (trumpet), Joe Lovano (saxophone), Miguel Zenón (saxophone), Robin Eubanks (trombone), Renee Rosnes (piano), Matt Penman (bass) and Eric Harland (drums)] plays the Chan Centre, Tuesday March 17th, 2009 at 8 PM, presented by the Coastal Jazz & Blues Society and the Vancouver 2010 Cultural Olympiad. Visit http://www.coastaljazz.ca or www.chancentre.com Discuss in the Jazz Forum