Mads Tolling with John Hanrahan A Love Supreme Quarter and Mads Tolling with Ron Marcus Love Soaked Ensemble featuring Danny Click, spoken word with an all star band.
Doors at 8:30 pm; Show at 9:00 pm
Tickets are $15 Advance / $20 Day of Show
MADS TOLLING BIO
MADS TOLLING, internationally renowned Danish-American violinist and composer, is a two-time Grammy Award-Winner. As a former nine-year member of both bassist Stanley Clarke’s band and the celebrated Turtle Island Quartet, Mads won two Grammy Awards, and he was nominated for a third Grammy in 2015. Recently, he was the 2016 winner of the DownBeat Critics Poll Rising Star Violin Award. Mads has performed with Chick Corea, Ramsey Lewis, Kenny Barron, Paquito D’Rivera, Leo Kottke and Sergio & Odair Assad.
After graduating Berklee College of Music in 2003, Mads was recommended by Jean-Luc Ponty to join Stanley Clarke’s band. He has since been featured on NPR’s Morning Edition, and his recordings have received rave reviews in Washington Post, San Francisco Chronicle, Strings Magazine and DownBeat Magazine. Mads has performed for Danish royalty – Prince Frederik & Princess Mary – at the celebration of The Danish Embassy’s 50-year Anniversary.
Mads has twice been commissioned to write violin concertos – for Oakland Symphony and Pacific Chamber Orchestra. He has performed his symphonic works and soloed with orchestras around the US and Japan.
Mads has appeared on multiple recordings, including Teena Marie’s La Dona, Stanley Clarke’s Toys of Men and Ann Hampton Callaway’s At Last. Mads has five solo releases, including his sophomore album, The Playmaker that features Russell Ferrante, Stefon Harris and Stanley Clarke.
Mads now leads his own groups - Mads Tolling Quartet and Mads Tolling & The Mads Men. His latest release, Playing the 60s, take us back to the 1960s serving up fun-filled nostalgia, new arrangements of familiar tunes and fresh takes on jazz standards and the not-so-standard, pushing the boundaries of where a violin can go. The album, released in 2017, features vocalists Kenny Washington, Kalil Wilson and Spencer Day, and spent two months on US jazz radio’s top 30.
With his groups, Mads has performed over a thousand concerts around the world, including at The Hollywood Bowl, Library of Congress, North Sea Jazz Festival and in the Bay Area at Yoshi’s, SF Jazz and Paramount and Herbst Theatres. As a featured Yamaha Artist, Mads leads clinics and masterclasses in the US and internationally.
To find out more about Mads Tolling, please visit http://madstolling.com
JOHN HANRAHAN BIO
John Hanrahan’s Love Supreme Quartet has been performing together in Chicago and around the globe for over 20 years. This accomplished ensemble performs ‘A LOVE SUPREME’ in an effort to share Coltrane’s passion for jazz, spirit, and the love of live performance. Considered to be the defining jazz recording of all time, John Coltrane and his equally innovative quartet (McCoy Tyner, Jimmy Garrison, Elvin Jones) recorded the album ‘A Love Supreme” in 1964 on Impulse Records. Hanrahan’s quartet performs the full suite in celebration of Coltrane’s significant landmark recording.
A veteran of the creatively fecund Chicago jazz scene, Santa Cruz-based drummer John Hanrahan has made a strong impression in the area with his quartet’s galvanizing performances of John Coltrane’s prayerful masterpiece ‘A Love Supreme.’
SHARON SOFIA BIO
Sharon Sofia is a pioneer of electric flute and is the signature sound of Ron Marcus Love Soaked Ensemble, appearing on 30 spoken word CDs. She explores the sonic journey of effects played through a flute discovering infinite waves of possibility. She is a responsive player and is adept at improvisation and playing with other lead instruments. Her remarkable pairing up with Mads Tolling is breathtaking.
Hailing originally from New York, Sharon began classical music education at age 7 at the Hoff-Barthelson School of Music. She later picked up guitar and flute, self-taught, then studied Jazz at SUNY Purchase with Lou Stein who played with Charlie Parker and Dizzie Gillespie. In addition to his amazing stories, he demonstrated by playing one note on a grand piano on a stage in an acoustically engineered environment, that one note could sound transcendently beautiful. Aha moment.
As a teenager, she heard ‘Flute Thing’ by Blues Project. She was taken by the idea of chasing that echoplex flute sound and taking it much further. She was empowered with making her flute sound like Jimi Hendrix on the Star Spangled Banner! She is driven to empower all flautists with the ability to utilize all effects that guitarists use and create a whole new universe of sound.
Prior to locating to Oakland in 1979, she had musical enounters with Taj Mahal and Sun Ra. With Ron Marcus she has recorded with legends Ernest ‘Boom ‘ Carter and Joel Smith who formed the greatest rhythm section in the world. Guitarists Peter Fujii, Peter Harris, Jody Salino, Squid Vicious and Jordan Breslow provided her the opportunity to use her intuitive improvisation skills to play off them to produce a unique double lead sound.
She co founded Plan Be with songwriter Jeff Gordon and plays keyboards and sings with Rockridge Station with Ron Marcus on drums, and also is a founding member of Temescal; bands that play local venues throughout the SF Bay Area. A veteran of BandWorks, Sharon has played dozens of times at Asknenaz Music Center.
RON MARCUS BIO
Ron Marcus is an Oakland based lyricist with over 900 songs in his catalog. He studied at The Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado. He studied from Beatnik masters Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs, Gregory Corso, Ann Waldman and Larry Fagin. He collaborated with composers like Squid Vicious, and former Bruce Springsteen drummer Ernest ‘Boom’ Carter.
In 1999 he began recording spoken word CDs featuring Ernest Carter on drums and Joel Smith (Hawkins family) on bass with electric flautist Sharon Sofia and a rotating list of superb guitarists like Peter Fujii, Jody Salino and Peter Harris. The results are a powerful rock, funk, jazz and psychedelic mixture with Ron’s image based poetry.
“The songs are strong, well played & sung, compellingly modern.”
Robert Hunter (Grateful Dead lyricist)
All 32 spoken work CDs are available for free on www.romarcusmusic.com.
DANNY CLICK BIO
Until a few years ago, Danny Click was one of Austin’s best-kept secrets, a musician’s musician who’d won the respect of some of alt-country’s biggest names but hadn’t yet found widespread recognition.
That changed when Click’s latest CD, Life Is A Good Place, was released in April, 2011 and spent more than 12 consecutive months on the Country, pop, and Americana radio charts.
The first single, “Wait My Turn”, reached #1 on Nashville’s Indie World Country Chart, and the second single, “I Feel Good Today”, topped out at #14 on the NMW national Country chart along side Keith Urban, Miranda Lambert and Taylor Swift.
In the San Francisco Bay Area, where Click now resides, he’s built a large and passionate fan base that includes musical greats Carlos Santana and Elvin Bishop, both of whom have joined him on stage for impromptu jams.
Click and his band The Hell Yeahs, featuring a round-robin roster of top-shelf musicians, have played more than 200 sold-out shows over the past two years, as well as opening for legends Taj Mahal, Cake, Robert Plant, Mavis Staples, Sonny Landreth and JJ Cale.
Last summer Click bumped it up another notch, playing large festivals like the new Mount Tam Jam and Waterfront Blues Festival in Portland.
What’s causing all the buzz? First, there’s Click’s sound – a refreshing return to smart, sassy blues-inflected country rock. Think Tom Petty crossed with Wilco, spiced with the southern tradition of Lucinda Williams and John Hiatt. Add to that Click’s searing guitar, reminiscent of Stevie Ray and David Lindley, and you’ve got at least part of the picture.
Then there are Click’s live shows; an anything-can-happen mix of stellar songwriting alternating with blistering blues-rock. When Click brings it down with the strings-inflected “Blue Skies”, you can hear every breath in the room; when he launches into the infectious “Wait My Turn,” there’s not one person who can stay seated.
Lastly, there’s his songwriting. Continuing in the tradition of the Texas greats, Click pens wide open songs deeply rooted in a life well-lived. Growing up in a small farm community outside Indianapolis, Click was the youngest of nine children in a working class family. He was gigging in his older sister’s country and western band before he was out of high school.
Click moved to Austin, where his three-piece alt-country outfit, Danny and the Hurricanes, was a local phenomenon. He then spent three years with Americana artist Jimmy LaFave.
Life Is A Good Place is the payoff, putting Click squarely in the upper echelon musically and lyrically. From its radio perfect songs to the sparse stories taken from real life, it leaves you filled with hope and a new respect for the human condition.
Fast forward to 2013. After four previous records and literally hundreds of gigs on the road, Click’s latest single, Baptize Me Over Elvis Presley’s Grave, went to #9 and stayed in the top 10 for the entire month of October, 2013. The music video is on CMT and is a viral share online.
In 2014, Danny became a regular guest at Grateful Dead legend Phil Lesh’s club, Terrapin Crossroads and released a ripping live CD, ‘Danny Click & the Hell Yeahs! ~ Captured LIVE!’
In April 2015, Danny and band finished a brand new studio album with legendary producer Jim Scott (Tom Petty, Rolling Stones, Wilco, Lucinda Williams, etc.) which was released worldwide on Sept. 18, and is still on radio charts and DJ playlists across the country.
The title track reached #1 on Indie Country radio in June 2016.
Hell Yeah indeed.
JODY SALINO BIO
Hailing from Brooklyn, NY, Jody Salino’s musical resume runs the gamut of Americana music from folk, rock and blues to jazz. Having honed his considerable guitar prowess with the likes of Jorma Kaukenon, Rick Danko, John Renbourn, Stefan Grossman, Jaco Pastorius and Rashied Ali, his stellar guitar work shines through 15 CDs of the Ron Marcus catalog.
In 2001, Jody began mastering live soundboard recordings for Phil Lesh & Friends that were made available for free download onwww.phillesh.net Jody also mastered the live bonus disk that was included in Phil Lesh and Friends ‘There and Back Again’ release.
His engineering skills are evident on Commander Cody’s guitarist Bill Kirchen’s Honky Tonk Holiday.
The last three years Jody has lit the bay area on fire with Shakey Zimmerman. Along with Pat Nevins’ vocals, Shakey Zimmerman brings a fresh, authentic, true-to-form sound to welcoming crowds at clubs, wineries, festivals, restaurants, corporate events, and private parties throughout California and beyond. The acoustic/electric duo, or full band, delivers the most famous songs, as well as the deep cuts of iconic and legendary songwriters Bob Dylan and Neil Young. Salino’s fingerpicking guitar expertise matched with Nevins’ voice is sheer magic.
Jody Salino has teamed with vocalist Jeff Sullins since 1992 in The BluesCasters. This raw and raunchy performance group shows off its superior musical talents and intuitive lyrical style. BluesCasters
Is a highly polished, soulful, original blues and blues influenced rock and roll band.
Jennifer Jolly
Jennifer Jolly is a Bay Area keyboardist, multi-instrumentalist, composer, and educator specializing in North American, Caribbean, and African roots music. She has performed at hundreds of venues and festivals in California, the Pacific Northwest, and Canada. Jennifer currently performs with Pamela Rose’s theatrical concert “Blues is a Woman,” The Jolly Gibsons, Jennifer Jolly & Friends, Zulu Spear, Kotoja, Big B and His Snake Oil Saviors, Bait & Switch Blues Band, The Party Monsters, Tom Rigney & Flambeau (sub), Chelle! & Friends (guest), The Linwood Chorus (accompanist), the Creekside Church Worship Band, and several other local groups. Previous credits include Barbara Dane, Phil Lesh, The Broken Angels, and Hot Links. Jennifer is a long-time faculty member at The Jazzschool/California Jazz Conservatory (keyboards, world music, improvisation), The Jazzschool Women’s Jazz & Blues Camp, and Cazadero Family Camp. She also teaches in after-school programs, workshops and clinics, and her private studio.
