Arts & Entertainment
Club Sextet Brings Space-Age Jazz to the Arsenal Center
Mark Shilansky's Join the Club Sextet promises unique mash-ups of jazz, latin, and pop sounds.
Jazz lovers will have an opportunity to expand their musical horizons this Monday when Mark Shilansky’s Join the Club Sextet performs at the Arsenal Center for the Arts. The show has been billed as "21st Century Space-Age Bachelor Pad Music."
"It's jazz, but with a lot of Latin and world music and pop influences," says Shilanksy, the sextet's leader. "The bachelor pad music comment was made, I believe, because we often do humorous style mash-ups of certain tunes from different genres, as is done in lounge music… So, we do the Lee Morgan tune Ceora but with grooves stolen from the Police's De doo doo Doo, or we do a latin-jazz cover of the Cardigan's Lovefool, complete with montuno and with horns mimicking the vocal phrasing."
Monday's performance is part of the which includes some of the best jazz ensembles in the Boston area, many headed by faculty members of the Berklee College of Music.
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Shilansky, a professor at Berklee, is the sextet's lead vocalist and pianist. The group also features guitarist Eric Byers, saxophonist Dino Govoni, trumpeter Doug Olsen, as well as Fernando Huergo on bass and Bertram Lehmann on drums.
"The rhythm section [Huergo and Lehmann] are huge scholars of Latin jazz and world music, as well as jazz, of course. So, I consult them in matters of style authenticity," Shilansky says. "You're really getting an encyclopedia of music when you listen to them, and it infuses the band with something special. We're doing a few newish tunes and arrangements of mine, like a mash-up of the Meters' Cissy Strut and Charlie Parker's Yardbird Suite."
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So what does Shilansky hope the audience ultimately takes away from the concert?
"I hope they laugh a bit, and move their feet a bit, and I hope to maybe expand their ideas about what typical jazz repertoire can be."
Monday night’s performance will be held in the Black Box Theater at 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $18; $15 for students, seniors, and arsenalArts members, plus fees. For tickets or for more information, call 617-923-8487 or visit the Arsenal Center for the Arts website.
