(photo of Carmen Staaf by Christopher Drukker)
Like pretty much everyone else—including her former teachers Herbie Hancock and Wayne Shorter and her now-frequent collaborators Allison Miller and Jenny Scheinman—we were moved and mightily impressed by Carmen Staaf the first time we heard her play. We’re thrilled to welcome her back to open our twentieth season with a preview of her new album, Sounding Line, a set of duo, trio, and quartet pieces that plumb the depths of jazz piano history across the converging musical currents of two modern geniuses, Thelonious Monk and Mary Lou Williams.
Born in Seattle, Staaf was a fellow at UCLA’s Thelonious Monk (now Herbie Hancock) Institute of Jazz, then rose to become a fixture of the improvised music scenes in New York and—in part through her teaching at the renowned Stanford Jazz Workshop—the Bay Area. (The new record was tracked in Oakland with other prominent members of that latter community, several of whom join her for this tour.) Currently serving as Musical Director for NEA Jazz Master Dee Dee Bridgewater, Staaf has played top clubs, festivals, and performing arts centers throughout the world, accompanying everyone from avant-garde icon John Zorn to Wynton Marsalis’s Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, as well as pop stars likes Natalie Merchant and Lila Downs. As a composer and arranger, she’s had commissions from the Jazz Education Network and the American Ballet Theater. A Yamaha Artist and a faculty member at New York’s New School University, Staaf vied for the title of Rising Star Jazz Artist in the 2024 DownBeat Critics Poll and Rising Star Pianist in the 2021, 2022, 2023 and 2024 polls. Her duo album with Allison Miller, Nearness, was one of the magazine’s picks for Best Albums of 2022.
Clarinetist and repeat RJA guest Ben Goldberg (Plays Monk, Go Home, Myra Melford’s Be Bread, Allison Miller’s Boom Tic Boom) grew up on The Beatles and classic jazz. He started playing Klezmer music at UC Berkeley in the early '80s, and went on to play with The Klezmorim before co-founding the New Klezmer Trio, a band that led the way in injecting elements of jazz and the avant-garde into Jewish traditional music. A prolific composer and convener of a wild variety of projects, Goldberg counts Monk’s music as “central” to his education and development.
Vibraphonist and drummer Dillon Vado marched with the Santa Clara Vanguard before studying at Berkeley’s California Jazz Conservatory and embarking on a career that has taken him from Bay Area venues like The Freight and Salvage, Yoshi’s, and SFJAZZ to famed international jazz festivals like Montreux and Umbria. In addition to leading his own projects, the Marimba One artist has supported jazz veterans like Art Lande, Royal Hartigan, Marcus Shelby, and Kate McGarry.
Drummer Hamir Atwal, another Bay Area native, studied at Berklee College of Music with Joe Lovano and Hal Crook, shaping a sound that blends jazz, experimental, and pop influences. He has toured and recorded with artists as varied as indie-pop innovator tUnE-yArDs and avant-garde pianist Myra Melford, and is a member of Ben Goldberg’s trio “Invisible Guy.” An active educator, Atwal has led clinics at CalArts, the Peabody Conservatory, and Stanford Jazz Workshop.
Carmen Staaf & Dillon Vado play Mary Lou Williams and Thelonious Monk at Palo Alto Art Center, October 2024
Sponsors
We couldn’t present world-class artists at such affordable prices without the steadfast support of dozens of RJA members & sponsors, not to mention the community spirit of Arcata’s dynamic arts agency, Playhouse Arts. Special thanks to Bug Press, the most steadfast of jazz allies, for its abiding generosity.
Additional support for this show comes from Cafe Brio, Dick Taylor Craft Chocolate, John Helie & Monica Simms, Bob & Amy Doran’s Black Cat Alley Hideaway, the North Coast Co-Op, and Arcata’s manufacturer of world-renowned, hand-crafted percussion keyboards and mallets, Marimba One.
