Joel Behrman, trumpet.
Rico Jones, saxophone.
Matt Clark, piano
Essiet Okon Essiet, bass.
Sylvia Cuenca, drums.

$25 cover charge / byob. Students $10.
For a reservation, call the bookshop at 415-586-3733.

Sylvia Cuenca, born and raised in San Jose, was called while still in her teenage years for her first professional gig by the late, great guitarist Eddie Duran at the original iteration of Jazz at Pearl’s, when it was an afterhours club in the basement of the Great Eastern Restaurant in Chinatown. Pearl’s moved up and over onto Broadway where it had a 13-year long run as San Francisco’s most important jazz club from 1990 to its closure in 2003. Sylvia headed for NYC in the late 1980s and established a stellar career that included a four-year stint as saxophone legend Joe Henderson’s drummer, and a seventeen-year run as the drummer for trumpeter Clark Terry’s band. She’s bi-coastal now, active here and in New York, with an international reputation.

The band tonight is stellar, with another San Jose native, the remarkable Joel Behrman on trumpet, and the acclaimed saxophonist Rico Jones, born and raised in Denver and for the past decade making his indelible mark on the New York jazz scene; not to mention the superb pianist Matt Clark and the great Essiet Essiet on bass. Essiet was with Art Blakey’s Jazz Messenger in its final iteration before the leader’s demise, and enjoys a top-flight career playing on both coasts and internationally.