Chris Amberger and Grant Levin

Chris Amberger has appeared frequently on the Bird & Beckett stage, and we’re fortunate indeed that today he leads a quartet here for the first time — and one that can’t fail to play with great joy and intensity, characteristics that Chris has manifested here time and again..

Chris learned his trade as a youth in Oakland in the late 1960s in the company of now legendary players as free jazz was exploding.  Subsequently, he was hired by Art Blakey and traveled widely with  Blakey’s famous Jazz Messengers. In the decades since, he’s never slowed down!

Louis Sweatt

Francis Vanek

For this date, he’s invited long-time colleague, saxophonist Francis Vanek to front the quartet, and young drummer Lewis Sweatt to lay down the beat, handle the time and more… Pianist Grant Levin has been closely associated with Chris for a decade or more; they’ve often been heard together at Bird & Beckett, always in sympathetic communion, always a delight.