Mamboleo!

From Ruth Asawa School of the Arts:
Amaru Duran-Calahorrano – Drums.
Santiago Winton – Piano.
Sai Ray – Trumpet.
Mateo Siguenza – Bass.

From Oakland School for the Arts:
Vito Marcacci – Trombone.

From Berkeley High School:
Mario Barragan – Congas.

On the first Sunday of most months (subject to the academic calendars of our fine Bay Area colleges, high schools and such), Bird & Beckett plays host to budding jazz musicians performing in combos and participating in a jam session.

This month, we’re excited by the return of Mamboleo, a group that wowed our audience a few months back, made up of students drawn from the jazz programs at San Francisco’s Ruth Asawa School of the Arts, the Oakland School for the Arts and the legendary Berkeley High.

Bring your checkbook or a wad of cash to help us sustain our commitment to giving young musicians the opportunity to please an avid audience on a stage that has hosted eminent, world-traveled musicians from Eddy Henderson to Bobby Bradford to Lew Tabackin to Ed Cherry to Idris Ackamoor to Rhodessa Jones to Kahil El’Zabar to Frank Jackson to Annette A Aguilar to Sylvia Cuenca, and countless Bay Area jazz professionals of all generations. 

The young musicians are the future of jazz, and your support will be well-rewarded as they join the ranks of their elders.

At right, young trumpeter Skylar Tang–now turning heads in NYC while still in her undergrad years there–leading a combo with two young contemporaries and veteran drummer Sylvia Cuenca. Sylvia was born in San Jose, had her first professional gig in the 1970s as a teenage prodigy in a combo led by the legendary guitarist Eddie Duran at Jazz at Pearl’s when it was an after-hours club in the basement of Chinatown’s Great Eastern Restaurant on Jackson Street. Sylvia put in four years as the drummer in tenor titan Joe Henderson’s quartet and 17 years filling that roll with the legendary trumpeter Clark Terry, and has played alongside hundreds of jazz greats in a three-decade career including the likes of Jazz Messenger Essiet Okon Essiet, Eddie Henderson, Charlie Haden, Lou Donaldson, Kenny Barron, Tootie Heath, Louis Hayes, Dianne Reeves, Dianne Schuur, Ernestine Anderson and Jazzmeia Horn.