Trumpeter Erik Jekabson has built a substantial and well-earned reputation as one of the very best trumpet players in the region. He’s got five cds out under his own name, has spent time on the road with Illinois Jacquet, John Mayer, Galactic, and the Howard Fishman Quartet, and has performed at such notable venues as the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, the Algonquin Room, the New Jersey Performing Arts Center, Madison Square Garden, the Tonight Show with Jay Leno and Late Night with David Letterman. As an arranger and composer, he’s written for both vocalists (Madeleine Peyroux, Ani DiFranco, Jane Krakowski, Jackie Ryan, Kenny Washington, Madeline Eastman, Kellye Gray, Sandy Cressman, Raz Kennedy, Shanna Carlson) and instrumental ensembles. (San Francisco Symphony, the Stanford Jazz Orchestra, the Realistic Orchestra, the California State University East Bay Jazz Ensemble, the SF Composers Orchestra and his own Electric Squeezebox Orchestra, which plays every Sunday at Doc’s Lab in San Francisco.)

Erik currently leads his own ensembles in the Bay Area, and has brought them to the Stanford Jazz Workshop, the DeYoung Museum, the SFJazz Center, Kuumbwa Jazz, Cafe Stritch, the California Jazz Conservatory, the Napa Valley Jazz Society’s Parlor Series, Jazz at Pearl’s, The Sound Room, Pacifica Performances, the Downtown Berkeley Jazz Festival, the Red Poppy Art House, the Piedmont Piano Company and Old First Church Concerts. He also works with local Bay Area musicians such as the Fred Randolph Quintet, Mario Guarneri’s tbd, the Michael O’Neill Quintet featuring Kenny Washington and Manny Moka and the Band on Fire. Erik has a Bachelors Degree from the Oberlin Conservatory of Music and a Master’s Degree from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, and is currently the director of the Young Musician’s Program at the Jazzschool, and serves on the board of Jazz in the Neighborhood. He is on the faculty at the California Jazz Conservatory, Los Medanos College and Diablo Valley College, and has given clinics at Santa Rosa Junior College, Cal State East Bay and Loyola College in New Orleans. He’s a regular instructor at Jazzcamp West, the Stanford Jazz Workshop, the Lafayette Summer Jazz Workshop and the Brubeck Institute, and has written two books of jazz duets for trumpet.

Tonight Erik is joined by bassist Peter Barshay, whose career has spanned both coasts and considerable time playing shoulder to shoulder with many of the greats in the music, including Kenny Barron, Freddie Hubbard, Sonny Stitt, Kenny Werner, Shirley Horn, Woody Shaw, Pharoah Sanders, Blue Mitchell, Tony Williams, Joe Henderson, Joe Lovano, Johnny Griffin and Bobby McFerrin. He worked in New York for 15 years playing with his own groups and alongside a host of jazz’s elite, including international tours with such venerable jazzmen as Lou Donaldson, Johnny Griffin, Lew Tabackin and Joe Chambers.

Erik also has Alan Hall on the date, a first-call Bay Area musician born and raised in San Jose, whose flexible, complex and propulsive drumming have taken countless great dates into the realm of the truly remarkable.  Alan taught drum set and ensembles at Berklee College of Music for seven years, from 1986 to 1993, and currently teaches at California Jazz Conservatory in Berkeley and Cal State University East Bay in Hayward. He is the author of several articles and a drum book titled: “Internalization”- A non-reading intensive approach to mastery of the jazz drumming language.