Tag: jazz

Sunny Side Jazz Band, with Victoria Doutón

Crosstown Arts presents Sunny Side Jazz Band, with Victoria Doutón in The Green Room.

The Green Room at Crosstown Arts⁠
Wednesday, July 24, 2024⁠
Doors open at 7 pm | Show begins at 7:30 pm⁠
$20 in advance | $25 at the door⁠

PURCHASE TICKETS HERE

Sunny Side Jazz Band is based out of New Orleans, Louisiana. They are heavily influenced by the music of Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Nat King Cole, and many other early jazz legends.⁠
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Sunny Side provides a full New Orleans-style jazz band experience with three-part harmonies, a solid rhythm section, and an energetic vocalist and dancer.⁠
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In 2024 Sunny Side is planning their fourth national tour stopping in cities and towns between New Orleans, New York, and Ohio playing a variety of shows including several swing dance events.⁠

Victoria Doutón is a composer and multi-instrumentalist from Montevideo, Uruguay. She studied classical flute at the National Conservatory of Music in Montevideo as well as the Montevideo University School of Music.

Victoria has spent time in different countries across the globe — music has taken her to Venezuela, Ecuador, Argentina, Chile, Colombia, and Brazil.

After a few years in Rio de Janeiro, she moved to the USA, initially settling in Austin. She began collaborating with world-renowned international musicians, and eventually made her way to New Orleans. There she is fully immersed in the rich musical culture that is the foundation of American music.

She’s been in New Orleans for five years, where she is currently recording her first album.

Her travels have inspired her to write music that goes from Afro-South American rhythms to contemporary jazz. Her music combines the different cultures and places she’s been traveling to create a rich and multi-hued sonic tapestry.

Amina Figarova Sextet and the Matsiko World Orphan Choir

Crosstown Arts presents Amina Figarova Sextet and the Matsiko World Orphan Choir in The Green Room.

The Green Room at Crosstown Arts
Tuesday, April 30, 2024
Doors open at 7 pm | Show begins at 7:30 pm
Tickets: $20 in advance | $25 at the door

PURCHASE TICKETS HERE

“Among the most important composers to come into jazz in the new millennium” – JazzTime

Hailing from Azerbaijan, the New York-based Amina Figarova is an internationally influenced—and recognized—composer, pianist, and bandleader. Those three roles come to the forefront in Figarova’s sextets, bands with a remarkable chemistry that brings her detailed arrangements to life. Every member of the group stands out as a first-rate individual, but their dedication to Figarova’s eclectic and powerful compositions gives this group its depth of feeling and elite status. The Amina Figarova Sextet has been a hit at major festivals like the Newport Jazz Festival and New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival.

The Matsiko World Orphan Choir has brought together our world’s orphaned and vulnerable children to share their story of turning the pain of loss, hunger, and hopelessness into personal empowerment, an educational scholarship through their nation’s university or vocational levels to instill love, joy, hope, and optimism for the future.

Sungazer

Crosstown Arts presents Sungazer in the Theater

The Theater at Crosstown Arts
Tuesday, January 28, 2025
Doors open at 7 pm | Show begins at 7:30 pm
Tickets: $25 in advance | $30 at the door

PURCHASE TICKETS HERE

Sungazer is an international Future Jazz duo featuring YouTuber / bassist Adam Neely and drummer Shawn Crowder.

Originally formed in Brooklyn, NY in July of 2014, Sungazer has brought their unique blend of hard-hitting Jazz Fusion, 8-bit, Progressive Rock and EDM to audiences in the U.S. and Europe. Sungazer explores the human element of improvisation within the context of modern electronic music. Exciting, hard-hitting, and never predictable, Sungazer creates music aimed squarely ahead into the 21st century. They released their sophomore EP entitled Sungazer, Vol. 2  in 2019.

On October 11, 2021 they released their debut full-length album, Perihelion. The long-awaited debut LP explores time and the liminal spaces between jazz improvisation and modern electronic music aesthetics. The album was co-produced and mixed by Simon Grove (Plini, Protest The Hero, Intervals) and features an eclectic cast of guest musicians including Joshua de la Victoria, Hannah Sumner, Jae Soto, Tom Monda (Thank You Scientist), Shubh Saran, Jared Yee, Christian Li, Zac Zinger, Brian Plautz (Aberdeen), Brian Krock (Big Heart Machine) and the Resonance Collective.

Modern Masters Jazz Series: Wes “Warmdaddy” Anderson and The Ted Ludwig Trio

Crosstown Arts presents the Modern Masters Jazz Series: Wes “Warmdaddy” Anderson and The Ted Ludwig Trio in The Green Room.

The Green Room at Crosstown Arts
Wednesday, January 24, 2024
Doors open at 7 pm | Show begins at 7:30 pm
Tickets: $20 in advance | $25 at the door | $10 student tickets

PURCHASE TICKETS HERE

Jazz alto and sopranino saxophonist Wessell “Warmdaddy” Anderson played jazz early on at the urging of his father, who was a drummer. He played in local clubs from his early teenage years, and studied at the Jazzmobile workshops with Frank Wess, Charles Davis, and Frank Foster. He also met Branford Marsalis, who convinced him to study with Alvin Batiste at Southern University in Louisiana.

 

Soon after this, Anderson began touring with the Wynton Marsalis Septet, and collaborated with Marsalis through the middle of the 1990s. He continued to play with Marsalis’s Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra beyond this. In 1994, he released his debut album on Atlantic Records; pianist Eric Reed and bassist Ben Wolfe were among those who played as sidemen. His 1998 album Live at the Village Vanguard featured trumpeter Irvin Mayfield, bassist Steve Kirby, pianist Xavier Davis, and drummer Jaz Sawyer.

 

Alex Greene & the Rolling Head Orchestra

Crosstown Arts presents Alex Greene & the Rolling Head Orchestra in The Green Room.

The Green Room at Crosstown Arts
Saturday, May 27, 2023
Doors open at 7 pm | Show begins at 7:30 pm
Tickets: $15 in advance | $20 at the door

PURCHASE TICKETS HERE

Session keyboardist and composer Alex Greene (Reigning Sound, Big Ass Truck, the Kropotkins, Deepstaria Enigmatica) has over three decades of experience in Memphis and New York, and has performed and recorded albums and soundtracks with the Rolling Head Orchestra since 2009. Whether he’s in singer/songwriter mode or leading a jazz band, his compositions combine strong melodic lines with unexpected, shape-shifting harmonies. Combining themes worthy of the Golden Age of Hollywood with more modernist sonic textures, and echoing artists as diverse as Thelonious Monk, Duke Ellington, and Sun Ra, the classic jazz sextet of the Rolling Head Orchestra is now augmented by the eerie wail of the Theremin.

In 2010, the Rolling Head Orchestra scored the documentary Citizens Not Subjects: Reawakening Democracy in Memphis, leading to the album Depression Jubilee. The group has gone on to perform original scores for silent films since 2019, when Greene was a Resident Composer at Crosstown Arts, including soundtracks for A Trip to the Moon; Aelita, Queen of Mars; Buster Keaton’s The Cameraman; Flesh and the Devil with Greta Garbo, and, as commissioned by the Indie Memphis Film Festival in 2022, Häxan.

In this one of a kind show at The Green Room, Greene and the Rolling Head Orchestra will focus on these cinematic set pieces as stand-alone works. Free to stretch out over Greene’s compositions, the band, featuring some of Memphis’ finest players, will bring the music to life as never before, blending jazz rhythms and horns with the haunting tones of the Theremin.

The University of Memphis Jazz Singers

The Green Room at Crosstown Arts
Tuesday, April 25, 2023
Doors open at 7 pm | Show begins at 7:30 pm
Tickets: $10

PURCHASE TICKETS HERE

The University of Memphis Jazz Singers is comprised of 10 to 15 male and female vocal students. This group performs a wide range of music from traditional arrangements of jazz standards to more contemporary fusion jazz.