Dynamic trumpet virtuoso teams up with two-time Grammy Award winning saxophone legend & all-star band for one-night-only at BLU! Featuring Brad Goode, Ernie Watts, Adrean Farrugia, Kelly Sill, Anthony Lee.
Ernie Watts is a two-time Grammy Award winner who plays soprano, alto and tenor saxophone and flute, but most often tenor. He’s such a versatile musician that he’s been described as an R&B player as often as a jazz one, not entirely without accuracy. He was born on October 23, 1945 in Norfolk, Virginia, and attended the Berklee College of Music on a DownBeat scholarship. He toured for two years with the Buddy Rich band in the mid-1960s and visited Africa on a State Department tour with Oliver Nelson’s band. He settled in Los Angeles during the 1970s, playing tenor for 20 years in The Tonight Show Band, while doing a lot of film and TV work and recording with such as Steely Dan, Frank Zappa, Carole King and many Motown artists, including Marvin Gaye. He joined the Rolling Stones on a 1981 tour, also appearing in their 1982 film Let’s Spend the Night Together.
Watts' eclectic mix of career activities has included work with vocalist Kurt Elling in a tribute to Johnny Hartman and John Coltrane, Dedicated To You, which won Elling his first Grammy Award, and concerts with the WDR Big Band Cologne in Germany, the Croatian Radio Television Jazz Orchestra in Zagreb and the National Radio Band of Slovenia, which played two of his compositions arranged for Watts by the celebrated Michael Abene. He has performed in Jazz at the Kennedy Center, in Australia with Billy Cobham and orchestra, and in 2016 with the Symphonic Jazz Orchestra in Los Angeles.
Trumpeter Brad Goode hails from Chicago and is a generation younger than Watts, but shares the saxophonist’s diverse approach to the jazz tradition. He began playing trumpet when he was ten, eventually studying with the great Ellington lead-player, Cat Anderson, and falling under the influence of Dizzy Gillespie and other bebop greats. A neighbour who knew Gillespie took Goode to meet his hero who took one look at Goode’s diminutive stature and red hair and immediately dubbed him “Little Red Rodney.”
Goode’s playing is marked by a lot of range and technique, a big, lively sound, a wealth of ideas and stylistic openness. Essentially, he’s a modern bebop player who sometimes finds that his musical train of thought doesn’t always fit that style, so he steps outside of it – I’ve heard solos by Goode that remind me of Lee Morgan and Kenny Wheeler all at once. He’s been leading his own quartet since 2010 and in his own words, he’s “attempting to combine my diverse influences and experiences into a style that embraces them all.” (by Steven Wallace)
Get your tickets early for this special evening of exceptional jazz talent as they make their way through the Rubber City!