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El Cerrito Jazz Festival
El Cerrito High hosts 2nd annual Jazz Festival featuring John Daversa Small Band
The second annual El Cerrito High School Jazz Festival is taking place on Saturday, February 6, 2016 in the ECHS Performing Arts Center! The festival will feature workshops, master classes, clinics, concerts, and adjudicated performances from top high school groups from around the San Francisco Bay Area.
Headlining the evening concert is the John Daversa Small Band. The John Daversa Small Band consists of tenor saxophonist Robby Marshall, alto saxophonist/flutist/vocalist Katisse Buckingham, keyboardist Tommy King, bassist Jerry Watts and drummer Gene Coye. This powerhouse ensemble transitions with ease from sections of incredible sensitivity to vignettes of intensity rivaling that of Daversa’s own Big Band. Their latest album “Artful Joy” (2012) features Bob Mintzer and Gretchen Parlato.
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John Daversa is a versatile and internationally respected performer (Trumpet/EVI), composer, arranger, producer, bandleader, educator, and BFM Jazz recording artist. He is a winner of the Herb Alpert Award, David Joel Miller Award, the National Trumpet Competition, the ITG Jazz Soloist Competition, and was a finalist in the Thelonious Monk International Jazz Competition. Daversa’s celebrated and distinctive musical perspective has been a passport to performances on world stages such as The Today Show, Late Nite with David Letterman, The Oprah Winfrey Show, Live 8 (Berlin), Hamburg Music Festival, Java Jazz Festival (Jakarta), Monterey Jazz Festival, Montreal Jazz Festival, Montreux Festival, and the Playboy Jazz Festival. He has also had the opportunity to perform or record with artists such as Fiona Apple, Michael Bublé, Dori Caymi, Andraé Crouch, Sheryl Crow, Herbie Hancock, Bob Mintzer Big Band, and The Yellowjackets.
In 1996, Daversa founded the John Daversa Progressive Big Band, which is one of the leading forces of modern jazz today. In 2011, the band released its first studio album, Junk Wagon: The Big Band Album, to critical acclaim winning Best in Show and Awards of Excellence in Creativity/Originality and Production in The Global Music Awards. “Daversa’s fearless exploration…takes him off the beaten path, as he creates bold and ballsy big band music for the modern epoch.” – AllAboutJazz.com