$20 cover charge; sliding scale available
($10 suggested for musicians, students, limited income)

From New York, Daniel Blake, saxophone, leads a quartet in an NYC-SF Jazz Summit, with Jarrett Cherner, piano & Haggai Cohen Milo, bass also traveling in from the east, joined by our own Hamir Atwal, drums.

Read Dan’s bio and hear samples of his music on his website. Esperanza Spalding has praised Dan for “un-packaging the avant-garde gracefully and soulfully.” A much admired composer as well as bandleader, collaborator and soloist, he has played internationally with Spalding, Julian Lage, Anthony Braxton, Kenny Werner, and many others, and has released several albums, starting with “The Party Suite” in 2006 and including acclaimed “The Aquarian Suite” (2012) and “The Digging” (2016).

Here’s an August 2018 performance in Mt. Kisco, NY, an hour north of Manhattan, by Dan with The Digging, his working trio with bassist Dmitry Ishenko and drummer Jeff Williams: Cavemen Do It Too.

And here’s a date at Smalls in NYC early this year, with pianist Carmen Staaf augmenting the trio: Cry of the East. Beautiful stuff!

We’re in for a great ride the day after Christmas!

Dan was born and raised in New Jersey, took up music early, got simultaneous degrees in 2004 from Tufts University (a B.A. in child development) and the New England Conservatory of Music (a B.Mus.) and moved from Boston to NYC in 2006. After acquiring a master’s in composition from the Conservatory at the Brooklyn College of Music in 2008, he earned a Ph.D. in composition from the City University of New York Graduate Center in 2013.  Jarrett hails from San Francisco, and headed to Boston and environs for a B.A. in mathematics at Tufts while simultaneously earning a B.Mus. from the New England Conservatory; he returned to San Francisco for a couple of years before heading to NYC in 2008 for graduate work at the Manhattan School of Music and a burgeoning career. Israeli bassist Haggai spends significant time in Europe as well as New York, witness the itinerary to be found on his site at this link. Hamir is a San Francisco native, among the very best drummers we’ve ever encountered and always welcome at Bird & Beckett. He travels extensively domestically and abroad in jazz and many other musical contexts. Check out this video of Hamir with Jarrett and bassist Jeff Denson at the Cadillac Hotel here in the Tenderloin, eight years back during the holidays — January 2012, and keep watching for the next video up in the rotation, featuring a duo of Jarrett and Haggai at a Bay Area house concert in January 2013.

We’re more than pleased with this chance to show the richness of the NY/SF axis of bold jazz love!