Event Details
With Randy Ingram, Rufus Reid, and Joe LaBarbera
Doors: 7 pm | Music: 7:30 pm
Presented in partnership with Puddingstone, join us at JAC for an intimate evening of jazz celebrating the music, sound, and enduring influence of Bill Evans, one of the most beloved pianists and composers in modern jazz. Led by acclaimed pianist and composer Randy Ingram, this tribute project brings together a remarkable trio featuring legendary bassist Rufus Reid and drummer Joe LaBarbera, who was the last drummer in Evans’s trio.
The concert coincides with Ingram’s forthcoming album, Sound Within: A Celebration of Bill Evans, a deeply personal homage to an artist who has long shaped his musical imagination. Rather than simply recreating Evans’s style, Ingram approaches the tribute as a search for sound, feeling, and interiority: the qualities that made Evans’s playing so quietly transformative. With Reid and LaBarbera, the project honors Evans’s lyrical phrasing, harmonic depth, and spacious sense of ensemble dialogue while allowing each musician’s voice to emerge fully in the present.
Randy Ingram is a Brooklyn-based pianist and composer praised by JazzTimes, The New York Times, and The San Francisco Chronicle for his crystalline sound, contemporary harmonic language, and thoughtful approach to composition and improvisation. He has performed internationally across the United States, Europe, Japan, and South Korea, and has released a series of acclaimed recordings as a bandleader. His work spans trio, duo, and quartet settings, and reflects a deep commitment to melody, motion, and expressive clarity.
Rufus Reid is an acclaimed bassist, composer, and educator whose career has been central to jazz since the 1970s. He has appeared on more than 500 recordings, including collaborations with Dexter Gordon, Andrew Hill, Kenny Barron, Stan Getz, J.J. Johnson, Lee Konitz, Jack DeJohnette, and many others. Reid is also the author of The Evolving Bassist, a foundational text in double bass pedagogy, and his 2014 album Quiet Pride – The Elizabeth Catlett Project received two Grammy nominations.
Joe LaBarbera is a drummer and composer best known for his work with the Bill Evans Trio during the final years of Evans’s career. He has performed and recorded with many major figures in jazz, including Woody Herman, Chuck Mangione, Bob Brookmeyer, Jim Hall, Art Farmer, Art Pepper, John Scofield, Toots Thielemans, Phil Woods, and Tony Bennett. In 2021, LaBarbera published Times Remembered: The Final Years of the Bill Evans Trio, a memoir reflecting on his time with Evans.