California premieres

I enjoyed starting fall 2015 performing with many outstanding and diverse musicians on a string of concerts in California. They included a double bill at REDCAT as part of the Angel City Jazz Festival, the first set with bassist Lisa Mezzacappa’s Glorious Ravage (pictured above), a wonderfully innovative, multimedia work about Victorian-era “lady explorers” featuring a 15-piece ensemble and several video artists, and the second set with the always-inspiring Mark Dresser Quintet. The contrast made for a unique evening that Greg Burke captured creatively here. The next night, Mark premiered a new septet (and a lot of new music) at San Diego’s Athenaeum Music and Arts Library Jazz Series, which Robert Bush reviewed here, and shortly after that I enjoyed a couple days in San Francisco where we performed Lisa’s work twice at the Brava! Theatre for Women and the Arts in the Mission district.