LIVE at Piedmont Piano Company
The Dynamic Miss Faye Carol featuring Houston Person
Celebrating Mother’s Day
Join legendary vocalist The Dynamic Miss Faye Carol, her all-star trio, and special guest Houston Person for a delightful and electrifying afternoon celebrating Mother's Day! The Bay Area's queen songstress will join forces with pianist Joe Warner, bassist Essiet Essiet, and drummer Greg Hutchinson, along with the elder statesman of the saxophone, the legendary Houston Person for an historic afternoon of jazz, blues, and beyond.
$30 General Admission
We are offering a limited number of tickets to attend this performance in person. Advance purchase is recommended. Masking is encouraged but not required.
FAYE CAROL
The Dynamic Miss Faye Carol is known as an icon in the Bay Area and beyond, highly regarded for her powerful voice, astonishing versatility, and gift of connecting with her audience. Equally at home in jazz, blues, R&B, gospel, funk, latin, and hip-hop, she has developed her own authentic sound and unique delivery, delighting audiences young and old across the globe. After beginning her career with gospel music, Faye Carol made her name singing with Oakland blues and funk legend Johnny Talbot & De Thangs before forming her own trio and gaining fame in San Francisco's jazz, blues, and cabaret clubs of the 1970s and 80s. Over a 60-year career in music, this living legend has developed her own unique acoustic sound and style in Black Music - drawing from funk, blues, gospel, and straight ahead swingin' - and cultivated an audience that remains as diverse as her uplifting music. She has maintained a high level of musicianship in her groups, mentoring some of the Bay Area's brightest young talent including pianist Benny Green, bassist/composer Marcus Shelby, and her daughter, pianist/compser Kito Kamili. Her vocal proteges include international superstars Kehlani and Ledisi.
Miss Faye has shared the stage with Marvin Gaye, Ray Charles, Pharaoh Sanders, Joan Baez, Billy Higgins, Albert King, Bobby Hutcherson, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Buster Williams, Azar Lawrence, Steve Turre, Dennis Chambers, Bernard Purdie, Lenny White, Robert Randolph, Mistah F.A.B., Henry Butler, Gary Bartz, Cedar Walton, Ledisi, Philly Joe Jones, Dorothy Donegan, Pete Escovedo, David Murray, Chester Thompson, Charles Brown, and Eddie 'Cleanhead' Vinson, among others. Miss Faye is also a dedicated educator and founder of School of the Getdown. She has been honored with the proclamation of a city-wide “Faye Carol Day” in the City of Berkeley and inducted into the Oakland Walk of Fame, the Meridian Mississippi Walk of Fame, and the Pittsburg Entertainment and Arts Hall of Fame, and has received countless awards including the 2014 Bay Area Jazz Journalists Association Jazz Hero Award, Jefferson Award for Public Service, four Cabaret Gold Awards, Top Star Awards Entertainer of the Year, and a prestigious 2021 Hewlett 50 Arts Commission. www.fayecarol.com
HOUSTON PERSON
Ever since he recorded his first album as a leader, Underground Soul, for Prestige Records in 1966, big-tones tenor saxophonist Houston Person has been a standard-bearer of so-called soul jazz. His thoughtfully chosen repertoire of blues and ballads, popular and r&b standards, and compositions by fellow jazz instrumentalists aims to please the public and has helped keep Person in steady work, in clubs and concerts and on records.
Born in Florence, South Carolina in 1934, Person played piano before taking up tenor saxophone at age 17. After Army duty in Germany, where he played with such musicians as Don Ellis, Eddie Harris, and Cedar Walton, he studied at Hartt College of Music in Hartford, Connecticut. Person made his recording debut in 1965 on a Prestige album by organist Johnny “Hammond” Smith and, after forming his own band in the early Seventies, continued featuring organ players. In 1986, the saxophonist stopped using organists on the road and hired pianist Stan Hope, who’s been with him ever since.
Person, whose influences include Gene Ammons, Illinois Jacquet, Harold Land, Hank Mobley, and Sonny Stitt, has for many years booked his own gigs and produced his own records. Veteran jazz singer Etta Jones, best known for her 1960 hit “Don’t Go to Strangers” on Prestige, was the featured vocalist with Person’s combo from 1973 until her death in 2001. He produced numerous albums by Jones for the Muse and High Note labels, as well as discs for Ernie Andrews, Charles Brown Joey DeFrancesco, Charles Earland, Red Holloway, David “Fathead” Newman, Richard Wyands, and others.