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New Yorker Lew Tabackin brings a International Jazz Trio to the West Coast
with Russian bassist Boris Kozlov and British drummer Mark Taylor. Multi-reedist Tabackin's exquisite flute playing is one of the most distinctive
sounds in jazz, and as a stratospheric saxophonist he's nearly unmatched - only fellow tenor legends like Sonny Rollins and David Murray fly
quite as high. Come early and expect the moon - he'll give it to you!
Lew Tabackin is a player who has built upon the foundation of jazz tradition, standing on the shoulders of giants like Coltrane, Cohn and Rollins.
He developed his own unique voice and added it to that of the other great innovators who have gone before him.
A master of both the tenor saxophone and the flute, Tabackin makes beautifully intricate and unabashedly bold music.
Lew Tabackin's interest in music began in his birthplace, Philadelphia, where he first studied flute and then tenor saxophone in
high school. He majored in flute at the
Philadelphia Conservatory of Music.
After his U.S. Army service (1962-65), Mr. Tabackin moved to New Jersey and then to
New York, where he
played first with Tal Farlow and Don Friedman and later in the big bands led by Cab Calloway, Les and Larry Elgart, Maynard Ferguson,
Joe Henderson, Chuck Israels, Thad Jones and Mel Lewis, Clark Terry, and Duke Pearson. During the late 1960's, Mr. Tabackin led a trio
at a club called La Boheme in Philadelphia, in addition to playing in smaller groups with Donald Byrd, Roland Hanna,
Elvin Jones, and
Attila Zoller. In those early years he worked with Doc Severinsen and the studio band for Dick Cavett's television show. He also spent
some time in Europe, where he was a soloist with various orchestras, including the Danish Radio Orchestra and the Hamburg Jazz Workshop.
In 1968 he met
Toshiko Akiyoshi
when the two played together in a quartet. They eventually married and moved to
Los Angeles, where they
formed the award-winning big band known as the Toshiko Akiyoshi Jazz Orchestra.
While in
Los Angeles, Mr. Tabackin also played with Shelley
Manne and with various trios of his own with Billy Higgins, John Heard, and Charlie Haden. He also toured Japan frequently with Ms. Akiyoshi and
her orchestra as well as with his own trio, which included drummer Joey Baron and bassist Michael Moore.
During the 1980's he began to get some long overdue recognition as a flutist, winning many Down Beat critic's and reader's polls. In 1982 Mr. Tabackin
and Ms. Akiyoshi moved to New York, which brought him back to the Manhattan jazz scene. Since then he has solidified his position as a major tenor
saxophone and flute artist. In 1990 Mr. Tabackin released his first disc for Concord, Desert Lady, featuring Hank
Jones, Dave Holland, and Victor Lewis, followed by the acclaimed I'll Be Seeing You with Benny Green, Peter Washington, and Lewis Nash. In 1994 the same
group recorded What a Little Moonlight Can Do. Mr. Tabackin has also been associated with several all-star bands, including George Wein's Newport All-Star
Band, the New York Jazz Giants, and the Carnegie Hall Jazz Band.
Lew Tabackin, flutist and tenor saxophonist, is an artist of astonishing vision. His electrifying flute playing is at
once virtuosic, primordial, cross-cultural, and passionate. His distinctive tenor sax style includes the use of wide
intervals, abrupt changes of mood and tempo, and purposeful fervor, all in the service of showing the full range of
possibilities of his instrument - melodically, rhythmically, and dynamically. Without copying or emulating jazz greats
of the past, Mr. Tabackin has absorbed elements into his style, ultimately creating his own sound and aura.
The Jazz Bakery is "the most prestigious jazz space in Los Angeles — a serious, no-frills, seven-nights-a-week nonprofit
listening room of international renown, where everybody who’s anybody has played; where iconic musicians turn up as regularly in the audience
as on the bandstand; where just ascending the stage is a sure sign that you’ve made it into the music’s highest ranks." (from Brandt Reiter, LA Weekly,
The House that Ruth Built")
The Jazz Bakery has a mission - to bring up a new generation of jazz fans to appreciate, preserve and cultivate a unique American legacy and a gift
to the world, an art form that simultaneously conveys at its heart freedom, struggle and innovation: Jazz!
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Los Angeles 
Wednesday, 07 January 2009
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