Looking ahead: Southwest Florida jazz preview

Here is a rundown of noteworthy jazz events, principally in the Sarasota to Naples territory, from now through January.

Keyboard artistry on parade

You'd have to look far and wide to find anyone matching Bobby van Deusen's talents at the piano. He's a master of a wide range of jazz styles, possesses fine classical chops and astonishing technique.

Bobby van Deusen

All of that - and then some - was on display Friday, November 23 at the South County Jazz Club's matinee season concert opener in Venice FL. 

Pensacola-based van Deusen, a former member of the Barbary Coast Dixieland Band  who also paid his dues backing trumpeter Al Hirt in New Orleans, can dig into the styles of many piano greats. But even when he mines those distinctive sounds, he quickly adds a special something that makes the tune his own for the moment.

A two-phase classic jazz journey

Trombonist Bill Allred and his Classic Jazz Band brought their Charlotte County Jazz Society audience on a musical journey, on Monday, November 12, that explored music rooted in New Orleans, moved up the Mississippi River, and then over the highways to dig into the big band phenomenon that took the country by storm starting in the 1930s.



Bill Allred

Terry Myers

In its fourth visit to the CCJS concert series, Allred's band included reed player Terry Myers, trumpeters Charlie Bertini and Randy Sandke and trombonist Corey Paul, pianist Randy Morris, bassist Jay Mueller and drummer Eddie Metz Jr. It was the Port Charlotte debut for Paul and Sandke. Long a fixture on the New York mainstream jazz scene, Sandke recently moved to Venice.

Honoring Art Blakey's multi-faceted jazz legacy

Dan Miller, Lew Del Gatto

Drummer Art Blakey had a profound impact on jazz that has stretched from the 1940s, through bebop's 1950s and '60s heyday, right up to the present. The music associated with his Jazz Messengers band and his legacy as a bandleader were celebrated by the Dan Miller-Lew Del Gatto quintet on Sunday, November 11, in Naples FL.

And what a grand legacy it is. Blakey, who passed away in 1990, was without a doubt the finest molder of other future bandleaders who passed through his band. And there were scores of them. Benny Golson, Horace Silver, Donald Byrd, Lee Morgan, Wynton and Branford Marsalis, Terence Blanchard, Donald Harrison, Johnny Griffin, Chuck Mangione, James Williams, Freddie Hubbard, Keith Jarrett, Wayne Shorter, and on and on and on.