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Crosstown Arts presents world-renowned jazz musicians Bobby Watson and Curtis Lundy and Umoja with Terreon Gully and Marc Payne.

Tickets: $20 advance | $25 day of show

Doors at 7 pm | Show at 7:30 pm

Saxophonist, composer, producer, and educator Bobby Watson grew up in Kansas City, Kansas, and his playing is steeped in the roadhouse blues tradition of his native city. He got his formal education at the University of Miami, where his fellow students included Pat Metheny, Jaco Pastorious, and Bruce Hornsby. The college has a distinguished, long-running, and well-respected jazz performance program.

After he was graduated in 1975, he moved to New York City, the jazz capitol of the world, and soon found employment as musical director for Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers. Watson stuck with Blakey’s group from 1977 to 1981 and then pursued session and tour work with more vigor, working with drummers Louis Hayes and Max Roach, saxophonists George Coleman and Branford Marsalis, multi-instrumentalist Sam Rivers, guitarist Carlos Santana, and trumpeter Wynton Marsalis. He’s also worked with a “who’s who” in the jazz vocal world, including Joe Williams, Dianne Reeves, Lou Rawls, Betty Carter, and Carmen Lundy.

Finally, he launched his own group, Bobby Watson & Horizon, with bassist Curtis Lundy and drummer Victor Lewis, and they recorded for Blue Note and Columbia Records. Watson and Horizon were in demand and on the road from the mid-’80s to the late ’90s, and he still performs with the group, with differing sidemen. Watson has amassed nearly 30 recordings as a bandleader and he’s a veteran session man, having recorded on more than 100 other recordings. As a composer, he has recorded more than 100 of his original compositions, and his arrangements for big bands have circulated internationally.

Watson, basing himself alternately in New York City and Kansas City, has been a first-call musician for more than three decades now, and he also served as a member of the adjunct faculty at William Paterson University in the mid-’80s and at the Manhattan School of Music from 1996-1999. In 2000, he was selected as the first William D. and Mary Grant/Missouri Distinguished Professor of Jazz Studies, and he’s been working at the University of Missouri/Kansas City, balancing live concerts around the world with his teaching responsibilities. Since 2000, Watson’s recordings under his own name include three excellent releases for the Palmetto Records label, based in New York City. They include Live & Learn (2002), Horizon Reassembled (2004), and From the Heart (2008).

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Born in 1955, Curtis Lundy is a double bassist, composer, producer, choir director, and arranger. Lundy began his musical career in the All Miami Youth Jazz Band and was classically trained at the University of Miami under the tutelage of renowned bassist Dr. Lucas Drew. He has studied privately with Cecil McBee, Linda McKnight, Jaco Pastorius, and Ron Carter.

Best-known for his work as part of jazz vocalist Betty Carter’s band, Lundy made his debut on the New York jazz scene in 1978. Over the years, he has performed with an impressive list of musicians, including: Art Blakely, John Griffin, Freddie Hubbard, Paroah Sanders, John Hicks, Wynton Marsalis, Branford Marsalis, George Coleman, Clark Terry, Sam Rivers, the Savoy Sultans, Bobby Watson, Stanley Turnetine, Idris Mohamed, Steve Nelson Quintet, Mulgrew Miller, Hammiet Bluiet, Don Pullen, Elvin Jones, Hank Jones, Sonny Stitt, Jon Faddis, Hilton Ruiz, Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis, Phyllis Hyman, Lionel Hampton, Phineas Newborn, Johnny Hartman, Charlie Persip, Louis Hayes, Bobby Hutcherson, Barry Harris, and Frank Morgan.

In the late 1980s, he issued Just Be Yourself (1989), and a decade later, with Justin Time Records, he released Against All Odds (1999), followed by Purpose (2002). Lundy remains one of the most spiritually uplifting bassists on the jazz scene today. He is featured on the G-Three recording SWIFT with Billy Robinson on sax, Stacie McGregor on piano, and Billy Hart on drums. Lundy’s arrangement on “Walk With Me,” recorded by the ARC Gospel Choir, was sampled by rapper Kanye West and became the Grammy Award-winning hit “Jesus Walks.” This arrangement was also sampled in “This is Why I’m Hot” by Shawn Mims.