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in San Francisco's Glen Park neighborhood

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Wednesday, August 21 – 7:30-9pm
Jazz & Tongues:
The George Sams Experience

Alien Anchor, George Sams

$20 cover/sliding scale available.

Trumpet player, composer, arranger & visual artist George Sams, from St. Louis, leads a quintet comprising Richard “Zyc” Wood on sax and flute (from Los Angeles), Aaron Parker on flute (from St. Louis) and still, to this day, residing in the Bay Area, Carleton Hoffman, percussion; Joe McKinley, bass; and Gerald Nicosia, poetry.

 

Already a veteran of the B.A.G. era in St. Louis, Sams was a founding member of the San Francisco Jazz Society alongside Orrin Keepnews and Herb Wong; co-founded the bands United Front and Middle Passage, both key San Francisco units in the mid- to late 1970s; was a developer of curriculum, instructor and then Music Department chair at New College of California; and has consulted for numerous jazz festivals and arts organizations.

 

 

He has performed throughout Europe and the United States as a jazz instrumentalist and has made recordings under RPM Records, Hat Hut, SAJ, Sound Aspects and Monclair Records. He has received both musician and composer grants and Meet the Composer grants from the National Endowment for the Arts. In Missouri, he has worked in numerous education projects through the Young Audiences organization.

 

 

Mr. Sams has performed alongside countless musicians, including such masters as Eddie Moore, Andrew Hill, Lester Bowie, Hamiet Bluiett, Jon Jang, India Cooke, Oliver Lake, Malachi Thompson’s African Brass, Charles “Bobo” Shaw, J.D. Parran, Mark Dresser, Andre St. James, John Lindberg, Eugene Chadbourne, Jesse Foster, William Parker and Ratzo Harris; with the Al Tanner big band; and in the company of illustrious poets including Ntozake Shange, K. Curtis Lyle, Shirley Le Flore, Quincy Troupe and St. Louis Poet Laureate Michael Castro.

 

 

Mr. Sams has appeared with the Hamiet Bluiett Orchestra in New York at the Visions Festival, with violinist India Cooke in California for the Berkeley Arts Festival, with Oliver Lake in numerous settings and in St. Louis with New Music Circle musicians. He was acting director of the Don & Heida Wolff Jazz Institute at Harris Stowe State University in St. Louis during the school’s initial hiring search.

 

 

 

 

And check this film doc trailer for some background on the St. Louis black artistic and political avant garde of the ’60s, from whence George sprang and where he’s at now… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QO2HtjzpFU8

 

 

 

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The Bird & Beckett Cultural Legacy Project

Our events are put on under the umbrella of the nonprofit Bird & Beckett Cultural Legacy Project (the "BBCLP"). That's how we fund our ambitious schedule of 300 or so concerts and literary events every year.

The BBCLP is a 501(c)(3) non-profit...
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The Independent Musicians Alliance

Gigging musicians! You have nothing to lose but your lack of a collective voice to achieve fair wages for your work!
The IMA can be a conduit for you, if you join in to make it work.

https://www.independentmusiciansalliance.org/

Read more here - Andy Gilbert's Feb 25 article about the IMA from KQED's site

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