Gary Jenkins All-Stars with Eddie Baccus Sr. to Perform at DC JAZZ FEST this Weekend

Gary Jenkins All-Stars with Eddie Baccus Sr. will perform this weekend, June 14 and 15, at the DC JAZZ FEST. The groups will play both 8pm and 10pm sets at the Twins Jazz Club.

Gary Jenkins was born in 1946 in Massillon Ohio, his father and uncles are professional musicians. His father plays all woodwind instruments and his uncle plays piano and organ and sings. Gary started playing the drums at the age of 4 years old. His dad and uncle would rehearse at their home and he started to take interest in what they were doing. His father noticed his interest and asked him which instrument would he like to play, he said the drums, so his uncles drummer came over and picked him up and sat him down behind the drums. He's been playing the drums ever since.

Jenkins reinitiated his love with music and started private study at the Cleveland Settlement House of Music under the tutelage of principle percussionist with the Cleveland Symphony Orchestra, Bob Matson. His first organ gigs were with organist Winston Walls, next the incomparable Eddie Baccus Sr., Ronnie Foster, Jimmy McGriff, Grant Green, George Benson, Lou Donaldson, Shirley Scott, Richard (Groove) Holmes, the great Larry Young Jr., and the great Jimmy Smith. Other great musicians Gary has worked with are George Coleman, Stanley Turrentine, Joey Lovano, Valery Ponomarev, Don Braden, Ralph Moore, Gary Bartz, Ralph Lalama, Nathan Page, Jack McDuff, Keter Betts, Randy Johnston, Ike Cole, Carrie Smith, George Freeman, Dorothy Dunnigan, and Marian McPartland. Gary Jenkins has toured Europe, France, Germany, Spain, Switzerland.

In nearly 53 years of music, Gary Jenkins has earned a reputation as one of the most sought after musicians in the country, featured for several years at the East Coast Jazz Festival. As an established recording artist with several albums, including a collection with Greg Hatza on Palmetto records, and an album with George Freeman, he is continuing to expand his career as a sought after teacher and clinician. And one more thing, during an era of considerable challenge, Jenkins was the very first African American staff musician to work Walt Disney World.

"No doubt about it, Ernie Krivda is one of the originals of the tenor saxophone" wrote Bill Donaldson for Cadence Magazine about the legendary jazz musician whose 6th decade on the music scene is already filled with a new burst accomplishment with across the board critical acclaim for his 2011 CD Blues for Pekar. The Capri Records release was dedicated to the late Cleveland author and jazz commentator Harvey Pekar who had proclaimed Krivda as "one of the best jazz tenor men in the world."

Ernie Krivda was born in Cleveland, began his music studies at age 6, and attended The Cleveland Institute of Music before going on the road. Since that time he has shared the stage with some of the great names in jazz. He was mentored by musicians such as Cannonball Adderley, played in Quincy Jones orchestra and performed with artists ranging from Ella Fitzgerald to Jackie Wilson. Krivda has made his home in Cleveland for most of his life but his music takes him across the United States, and into the concert halls of Europe and Japan. He also is a highly respected teacher and clinician who mentored many young jazz musicians working on the world jazz scene.

In 2009 Ernie Krivda received the Cleveland Arts Prize award for lifetime achievement in music and he was also awarded a CPAC (Community Partnership of Arts and Culture) Fellowship worth twenty thousand dollars. In a career that spans almost 50 years, Krivda has earned the respect of his peers and the accolades of critics. His very personal and distinctive improvisational style, along with his unique compositions, has been documented on over 30 recordings under his name and many others as a guest artist. In the last decade and into this one, he has set a most prolific pace with eleven releases since 2003 and more to come.

Organist and resident legend Eddie Baccus, Sr. has been an anchor of the local Cleveland jazz scene since the early 1960's. Like the late great Jimmy Smith, he's a virtuoso on the Hammond B-3, equally adept at soul and jazz. He is a blind organist born in Lawndale, North Carolina, who attended the Ohio School of the Blind in Columbus, Ohio, where he studied the piano. He regularly performed with the saxophonist Roland Kirk, who was one of his schoolmates, and after moving to Cleveland, Ohio, in 1959 he heard Jimmy Smith and switched his concentration from the piano to the organ. This found him becoming hugely influential in the local jazz scene. In 1962 he recorded his only solo album "Feel Real" on Smash Records.

In the late 1960s he married Dolores and their son Eddie Jr. was born in 1970. Eddie Jr. went on to become an acclaimed saxophonist and performs with the group Pieces of a Dream.He became a virtuoso of the Hammond B-3 organ and now performs on stage with his own Eddie Baccus Sr. Quartet and Quintet and on occasion with the accompaniment of his son Eddie Baccus Jr.He has performed at Cleveland's acclaimed Karamu House, many jazz clubs and festivals such as Cleveland's Tri-C Jazzfest, where he appeared with the organist Tony Monaco, and accompanied numerous artists such as Gabriel's Horns, Cecil Rucker and his group the Good Vibes and JazzZeejazz in a tribute to Billie Holliday.

Purchase Tickets Online - www.TwinsJazz.com.

To post a comment, you must register and login.