Piedmont Piano Company is pleased to present
Kenny Washington with the
Erik Jekabson New Orleans Quintet
Vocalist Kenny Washington, a native of New Orleans, returns to his roots to do a program of New Orleans tunes accompanied by the Erik Jekabson New Orleans Quintet featuring clarinetist Rob Barics.
$25 General Admission
Kenny Washington, a native of New Orleans developed a deep love for music at a very young age. Kenny grew up singing and performing gospel in church. He began performing with the school band, playing saxophone and singing. After graduating from high school Kenny continued his studies in music at Xavier University. While at Xavier, he studied various styles of music ranging from traditional and contemporary jazz to classical, rhythm and blues and pop.
Joining the honorary U.S. Navy Band in 1986, Kenny performed and toured nationally and internationally through out the U.S., Asia, Russia, and Australia. After nine years as a musician in the U.S. Navy, Kenny made his home in the San Francisco Bay Area. He began performing and recording in various jazz clubs in the with other well known artists. Kenny appeared in Roy Nathanson's off-Broadway production "Fire at Keaton's Bar and Grill," with Elvis Costello and Deborah Harry, in London and New York. Kenny was the featured vocalist at the San Francisco's world famous Mark Hopkins Intercontinental Hotel's "TOP OF THE MARK" for eight years.
Kenny is the featured vocalist on saxman Michael O'Neill's CDs, The Long and the Short of It, and Still Dancin, recorded on Jazzmo records. Kenny is also one of the featured vocalists on the Slammin' All Body Band CD, with Keith Terry.
If you have never heard this New Orleans native sing before, get ready for a jaw dropping experience. Kenny is a jazz vocalist virtuoso. Emulating the classic styles of Ella Fitzgerald and Sarah Vaughan and infusing colors of Stevie Wonder and Donny Hathaway, Kenny's free, playful approach, with over a four-octave range is awe inspiring. His tone on ballads is liquid, his scat is so rapid-fire, passionate, melodious and inventive that subsequent saxophone solos often pale, and his intonation is so precise that it becomes noticeable if the piano wasn’t tuned that day. His range seems limitless. With a childhood background singing in gospel, Kenny is at home with the Blues as well as Jazz. This man is a must-see. kennywashingtonvocalist.com
Erik Jekabson is a freelance trumpet player, composer, arranger and educator who lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. He is equally busy playing and composing for different bands, leading his own groups, teaching a wide variety of students and running the Young Musicians Program at the California Jazz Conservatory.
Erik has six CDs out under his own name: his most recent album is Erik Jekabson Quintet (2017) on the Wide Hive Record Label. His other CDs are: A Brand New Take (2016) on the OA2 record label, and Erik Jekabson Quartet & John Santos: Live at the Hillside Club, (2014) ,Anti-Mass(2012) , and Crescent Boulevard (2010) which are on his own Jekab’s Music record label. His debut CD, Intersection, was recorded in New York in 2002 and released on the Fresh Sound/New Talent label.
Erik also co-produced and played on four other recordings which are widely available: The Electric Squeezebox Orchestra’s The Falling Dream and Cheap Rent, Vista: the Arrival and New World Funk Ensemble. He’s recorded as a sideman on numerous other jazz recordings, as well as doing session work in many other genres of music and on movie and video game soundtracks.
He’s spent time on the road with Illinois Jacquet, John Mayer, Galactic, and the Howard Fishman Quartet, and has performed at such notable venues as the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, the Algonquin Room, the New Jersey Performing Arts Center, Madison Square Garden, the Tonight Show with Jay Leno and Late Night with David Letterman.
As an arranger and composer, he’s arranged for both vocalists (Madeleine Peyroux, Ani DiFranco, Jane Krakowski, Jackie Ryan, Kenny Washington, Madeline Eastman, Kellye Gray, Sandy Cressman, Raz Kennedy, Rachel Efron) and instrumental ensembles. (San Francisco Symphony, Utah Symphony, Stanford Jazz Orchestra, Realistic Orchestra, California State University East Bay Jazz Ensemble, SF Composers Orchestra and his own Electric Squeezebox Orchestra, which plays every Sunday at the California Jazz Conservatory in Berkeley.) erikjekabson.com