Arturo Sandoval © Andrea Canter

Multiple-Grammy winning virtuoso trumpeter and international star, Arturo Sandoval, appears at Yoshi's in Oakland on Friday, May 1st trhough Sunday May 3rd and then at the Kuumbwa Jazz Center in Santa Cruz on Monday, May 4th. Like his mentor Dizzy Gillespie, trumpeter Arturo Sandoval is equally gifted as a performer and entertainer. His Grammy-winning discography contains work as a founding member of the Cuban supergroup Irakere, classical recordings, and the score for the HBO biopic of his life and defection from Cuba, For Love or Country. From his days with the Cuban super-group Irakere to the United Nations Orchestra with Dizzy Gillespie to several award-winning albums, he has firmly established himself as a leader in jazz and classical music. He has a created a sound and style all his own. He can burn through an Afro-Cuban groove, tear up a bebop tune, soar over a Mozart concerto and soothe you with a luscious ballad; with equal power and grace Expect a true world music mix of salsa, mambo, bolero, rhumba, danzon to straight-ahead jazz and r&b.

McCoy Tyner © Andrea Canter

McCoy Tyner's powerful, propulsive style of piano playing was an integral part of the John Coltrane Quartet in the early 1960s and influenced countless musicians that followed him. McCoy Tyner and Bobby Hutcherson first recorded together on Hutcherson’s 1966 Blue Note album Stick-Up! They continued to work together regularly, appearing on other historic records such as Tyner’s Time For Tyner (1968), Sama Layuca (1974) and Quartets 4x4 (1980). 

Tierney Sutton with Kevin Axt © Andrea Canter

Growing up in the Milwaukee area, Tierney Sutton attended college at Weslyan University in Connecticut as a Russian major before discovering the great jazz vocalists. Switching gears and gaining a scholarship, she enrolled at the Berklee College of Music in Boston, and was soon opening for the likes of Billy Taylor and Max Roach. After relocating to southern California, she was a semi-finalist among a star-studded group of singers in the 1998 Thelonious Monk Jazz Vocal Competition, joining Roberta Gambarini and Jane Monheit in finishing behind winner Teri Thornton. Over the next decade she released a series of acclaimed albums for Telarc, including the Sinatra-inspired Dancing in the Dark (2004) and the Grammy nominated I’m With the Band (2005).

Jacqui Naylor©Andrea Canter

"She can make you sway gently with a blues-flavored melody, heat up a room with a strong R&B sound and then cool it right down with a smoothness that slides gently into your ear."

--Cabaret Magazine 
 

On You Don’t Know Jacq, released in 2008 for her Ruby Star label, Bay Area native Jacqui Naylor complements her most requested tunes with never-released covers and new originals. Stateside again after her fourth European tour. Naylor and her band will be heating up the East Coast--at Blues Alley in Washington, DC (11/18); at the World Cafe in Philadelphia  (11/19);  at Puck Live in Doylestown, PA (11/20); at the Turning Point in Piermont, NY (11/21); and at the Blue Note in Manhattan (11/24-26). If you still “don’t know Jacq,” this is a not-to-be-missed opportunity. And if you do know Jacq, you need little coaxing.