Jon Frank Quintet

which way west? Sunday concerts

Sunday, May 15th – sets at 4:30 & 5:30 pm

Trumpeter Noah Frank is featured with drummer Jon Frank’s fine group, which includes seasoned veterans Ken Rosen (sax), Terry Rodriguez (piano) and Ron Crotty (bass).

Noah is the product of a musical family (his father Jon has led the orchestra program at Hoover Middle School for years), with training at the Community Music Center on Capp Street, School of the Arts at the top of Glen Canyon, and at Berklee School of Music in Boston.  He’s back for a visit, and another exciting gig at Bird & Beckett.

Bassist Ron Crotty played with Dave Brubeck’s first quartet, and joined Brubeck again for a stint later in a long career of top-flight performing associations — which has included memorable work with pianists Vince Guaraldi and Bliss Rodriguez.  The album pictured here, with the classic SF cover photo by Jimo Perini, featured Crotty’s trio that included Vince Guaraldi, on piano and celeste, and Eddie Duran on guitar.

Pianist Terry Rodriguez grew up on jazz in its many varieties here in the Bay Area; his father was clarinetist Dick Oxtot (a key player throughout the trad revival of the ’50s and ’60s, noted for his early recognition of a terrific young blues singer named Janis Joplin, who sat in on a bar gig and the next day recorded several tunes with Oxtot’s trio in the family’s Berkeley house in 1965).  Terry has played with John Handy, Eddie Henderson and plenty of other greats through the years.

Saxophonist Ken Rosen studied as a youth in Indiana with George Russell, one of the absolute giants of jazz composition and theory,  and has had a hand in teaching legions of sharp young players in the Bay Area since the mid-1970s.  He’s played in a number of big bands and countless small combos through the years.

We’re proud to present this quintet, which will — for one rainy afternoon — encapsulate the historic, inter-generational depth of the music we lovingly call jazz.