This is the sixth season for the Redwood Jazz Alliance, a non-profit founded by three HSU professors, Michael Eldridge and David Stacey (English) and Dan Aldag (Music), along with three community members.
In that time, the alliance has presented 28 concerts, mostly on the HSU campus, with internationally known jazz artists. With support from the Office of the President, the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences and the Music Department, it has also presented free workshops for students and community members with all of the visiting artists.
The Donny McCaslin Group, which features McCaslin on tenor saxophone, Uri Caine on keyboards, Fima Ephron on bass and Mark Guiliana on drums, is the same one heard on McCaslin's most recent album, Perpetual Motion. Downbeat magazine called that disc “an irrepressible outpouring of ideas, sometimes flowing with such force that they seem to back up, tripping on each other, then gushing forth giddily.” Perpetual Motion finds McCaslin exploring electric jazz, with echoes of Memphis soul, Led Zeppelin, and West Coast funk in his original compositions, but, as Jazz Times noted, the music is still firmly grounded in the tenor saxophonist’s “vibrant, room-filling tone [and] the boundless rhythmic fluency of his soloing.”
Donny McCaslin is a past member of the Gary Burton Quintet and Steps Ahead. Today, he continues to balance his own projects (which include nine albums under his own name) with work in two of the most prominent groups in jazz, the Dave Douglas Quintet and the Maria Schneider Orchestra. McCaslin was nominated for a Grammy for his work on the latter's Concert In The Garden.
McCaslin's associates have equally formidable resumés, having played with everyone from John Zorn, Don Byron and the Jazz Mandolin Project to Natalie Merchant, Meshell N'degeocello and ?uestlove of the Roots.
The Redwood Jazz Alliance's 2011-12 season continues in October with saxophonist David Binney's Third Occasion Quartet on the 6th and drummer Allison Miller's Boom Tic Boom on the 30th. The spring half of the season features bassist Chris Lightcap's Bigmouth in February, vocalist Kitty Margolis in March and guitarist Rez Abbasi's Invocation Quintet in April. More information about all of these artists can be found at http://www.redwoodjazzalliance.org/2011-12.html
Advance tickets for Donny McCaslin and season tickets can be purchased at http://www.redwoodjazzalliance.org/tickets.htm