“The Annex Sessions” will continue our music series held at El Cerrito Natural Grocery Company Prepared Food Annex (The Annex) on Wednesday, April 2, 2025, 6-8:30pm with the
Gurkestra Trio
Charlie Gurke- saxophones/compositions
David Flores- drums
Colin Hogan- keys
They’ll be playing all original music from Charlie’s Lotería project, compositions inspired by the Mexican Lotería images. Volume 1 of these can be found at the streaming link below.
Charlie Gurke is a Bay Area based saxophonist, composer, and educator. In addition to leading various incarnations of his Gurkestra, Charlie is a member of the John Santos Sextet, The Electric Squeezebox Orchestra, Edgardo Cambon’s groups Candela and Latido. An active freelancer, Charlie regularly performs and records with collaborators in a variety of genres. Recent performances of note include the 2018 and 2019 Monterey Jazz Festivals (with John Santos and the Electric Squeezebox Orchestra, respectively), and the 2019 Montreux Jazz Festival (with the Grammy winning Pacific Mambo Orchestra).
Since 2010 Charlie has been composer and music director for We Players theatre company, composing scores for nearly all their productions and receiving Theatre Bay Area awards for his scores for Macbeth (2014) and Caesar Maximus (2018).
Charlie is currently on the faculty at Laney Community college in Oakland where he leads the Jazz Orchestra, Jazz Combos, and teaches music theory. Charlie is also part of the faculty of the Community Music Center in San Francisco, where he teaches Jazz Ensembles and is part of the faculty for the Mission District Young Musician’s Program.
A native of the Bay Area, Charlie attended the San Francisco School of the Arts (SOTA), where he studied with Wayne Wallace and Melecio Magdaluyo, among others. After high school Charlie moved to New York and attended the New School’s Jazz and Contemporary Music program, studying with legendary saxophonists Billy Harper and George Garzone. Charlie holds a bachelor’s degree in music with an emphasis on composition from California State University East Bay (aka Cal State Hayward), and a master’s degree in jazz studies from the University of Oregon.
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The Natural Grocery Company is proud to present this series in partnership with SunJams and Javier Navarrette Music Productions.
SunJams is committed to funding children’s music education in underserved public elementary schools. Your donation will help support this ongoing program.
All of the proceeds will go directly to our network of local musicians, each of whom have been severely impacted by the lack of events during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Whether you donate $10, $100, or $1000 – any amount helps and will allow us to keep bringing music to our community! As always, your donation to SunJams 501(c)3 may qualify as tax exempt.
Javier Navarrette Music Productions continues to bring live music to several venues around the Bay Area. Javier has been a professional musician and music educator in the Oakland Unified School District for the past 20 years. Over the past few years Navarrette has produced outdoors events that have proven instrumental in enabling musicians to deal with some of the fallout of the pandemic and shutdown that followed.
COVID RELATED SAFETY MEASURES
Please be safe. Feel free to wear a mask if you prefer.
TICKETS
Tickets are NOT required for this venue, you can simply come in, order food and beverages at the Annex counter and pay at the registers.