The Sean Mason Quartet plays Kuumbwa Jazz Presents, joined by Tony Glausi on trumpet, Felix Moseholm on bass, and Domo Branch on drums, at a club whose name, Swahili for "act of spontaneous creation," fits well with a bandleader known for the deliberate, unfolding tempo of his ideas at the piano. Kuumbwa's own program notes place The Southern Suite at the meeting point of tradition and reinvention, calling Mason a generational talent well on his way to becoming a leading voice of his era.
Mason has described the album as a deliberate embrace of contradiction, each song marking a break from cultural expectations he once felt pressure to conform to, resolved instead through the music itself, a theme that runs through Kuumbwa's own history as a scrappy, community-funded club that's hosted everyone from Dizzy Gillespie to Wynton Marsalis since its founding.
BEFORE YOU COME
Doors and dinner begin at 6:00 PM, with music at 7:00 PM. Door tickets are $36.75, with a $18.50 student rate (5% City of Santa Cruz admission tax included). Café Kuumbwa offers a dinner special of grilled sockeye salmon with herb salsa verde and roasted rosemary potatoes, with meat or veggie chili also available at the counter. The show is all ages.
ABOUT KUUMBWA JAZZ CENTER
Founded in 1975 by Tim Jackson, Rich Wills, and Sheba Burney with just $250 raised at a flea market, Kuumbwa Jazz Center is the oldest weekly jazz nonprofit on the West Coast, still operating from its original downtown Santa Cruz location. The intimate, 200-seat room has hosted a remarkable roster of legends over the decades, including Dizzy Gillespie, Art Blakey, Chick Corea, Horace Silver, and Wynton Marsalis, while presenting more than 130 concerts and reaching over 1,000 students a year through its jazz education programs.
ABOUT SEAN MASON
Sean Mason shines an introspective command as both pianist and composer through the historic lens of jazz on The Southern Suite, his 2023 debut. The record distills the essence of the genre for today's listener even as it points toward where Mason plans to take the music next.
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