Mal Sharpe’s Big Money in Jazz Dixieland Band
plus
New Horizon Stompers
led by Ned Walker with David Stare
@ COSTEAUX BAKERY & CAFÉ
417 Healdsburg Avenue
7 PM | $25 includes light fare and dessert
707.433.1913 | costeaux.com
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Wine Sponsor: Dry Creek Vineyards
Event Sponsors: Lee & David Stare, Dotty & Jim Walters, Julia & Bob Santos, Gay & Greg Wilcox
Get the right musicians together playing Dixieland, and the result is an intense conversation that communicates joy. Trombonist Mal Sharpe has been having these conversations for decades, with a direct link to the origins of the music by way of his playing with George “Pops” Foster, who started working in New Orleans in 1907. Mal’s Big Money in Jazz Dixieland Band is firmly in the tradition of San Francisco legends Lu Watters, who launched San Francisco’s Dixieland revival in the 1940s, and Turk Murphy, who extended it into the ’80s.
Perhaps “revival” isn’t really the right word for a music that will always exist as long as players, and audiences, demand the kind of simultaneous polyphonic improvisation that Dixieland represents at the quintessence. Mal’s band features musicians who are veterans of many early jazz styles, and even some modern.
Pianist Si Perkoff is a walking Bay Area jazz academy who has worked with everyone from Harry “Sweets” Edison to Pepper Adams to T-Bone Walker. Trumpeter Leon Oakley served in Turk Murphy’s band for 11 years. Clarinetist Dwayne Ramsey plays in the King Cotton Band, the Zenith Jazz Band and the Napa Valley Jazz Band. Bassist and tuba man Sam Rocha is in Clint Baker’s All Stars. And drummer Carmen Consino has worked with the Dynamic Miss Faye Carol, Sheila Jordan, Denise Perrier and Kim Nalley.
Expect them to light a fire under standards like “Beale Street Blues,” “Sunny Side of the Street,” and “Mood Indigo,” among others, proving yet again that trad is rad.
Opening the bill will be Sonoma County’s own New Horizon Stompers, a small community Dixieland band spun off from the New Horizons Band currently under the direction of Healdsburg’s Lewis Sbrana. “New Horizons” is a nationwide organization based on the fact that playing music promotes a long and happy life.
The New Horizons Stompers was founded a year ago and is headed by Ray Walker a retired music instructor from the Santa Rosa school system, who plays clarinet and banjo. Featuring David Stare on banjo, they also include Bob Taylor on trumpet, Ray Walker on clarinet and banjo, Richard Bloom and Bill Byrne on clarinet, Louise Graves and Neil Herring on alto saxophone, Bill Badstubner and Dave Graves on trombone, Gerry Turner on tuba, Jim Cunningham on drums, and Bob Ressue, piano.