“The Annex Sessions” Wednesday, December 11, 2024, 6-8:30pm will continue our music series held at El Cerrito Natural Grocery Company Prepared Food Annex (The Annex) with

 

Arcush

Featuring:

Marco Ghezzo – Violin

Javier Jimenez – Guitar

Luis Jimenez – Percussion

 

Arcush is a project born in the Bay Area by mediterranean musicians. It’s a blend of Balkan music mostly from Romania and Turkey, Gypsy Jazz, Western music, Latin music and Spanish Flamenco. Playing originals songs and covers.

They are very active on the world music scene with a community background and the need to draw bridges between musical styles that are much closer to each other than what appears when looking at the map.

What do Balkan Roma (“gypsy”) music and manouche jazz have in common with Latin music?

Marco Ghezzo (violin – Italy), Javi Jimenez (guitar – Spain), Luis Jimenez (percussion – Spain ).

They leap with virtuosity from one style to another to land in the original compositions, a sort of traditional music from a country that doesn’t exist, yet!

This is a video from a original song:

(26) “DOC” – Marco Ghezzo- ARCUSH TRIO – YouTube

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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 register.

“The Annex Sessions” will continue our music series held at El Cerrito Natural Grocery Company Prepared Food Annex (The Annex) on Wednesday, December 4, 2024, 6-8:30pm

 

Key Elements Latin Jazz Ensemble 

Patricia Thumas – keyboards

Robin Nzingah Smith – saxophone

Sue “Suki” Kaye – percussion

Sylvia Sherman – bass guitar

Joyce Baker – drums

 

Key Elements Latin Jazz Ensemble is comprised of some of the SF Bay Area’s most seasoned instrumentalists who perform exceptional original and Latin Brazilian classics for your listening and dancing pleasure. Their music has a fresh, new vibrant flair with infectious exotic rhythms to enchant you with!

 

Patricia Thumas

Patricia Thumas is a native San Franciscan, who emerged as the Bay Area’s first female Salsa pianist with the highly acclaimed “Ritmo ’74”, opening for the international stars of New York-based Fania Records label at many of San Francisco’s finest venues. She has had an extensive career as a Salsa Pianist, including working with John Santos’ late seventies Cuban Charanga band “Tipica Cienfuegos,” and was also a member of legendary Afro-Cuban Master Drummer Francisco Aguabella’s band. In the early 1980s, she formed part of Escola de Samba Batucaje, directed by Jose Lorenzo, which won first place in Carnaval. In the late 1980s she toured throughout the California State Dept of Correction System with Jazz Guitarist Eddie Duran & Saxophonist Madeline Duran’s Band. Later in the 1980s/early 1990s, she toured nationally and recorded 2 CDs with the internationally acclaimed “Blazing Redheads” on the Reference Records label. In the late seventies/eighties, she co-led “Chevere” & “Bahia,” both Latin & Brazilian jazz ensembles. From 1994-2002 she played piano with the “Julio Bravo & Salsabor Orchestra,” performing locally & nationally, and is a twenty-five year veteran of “El Grupo Sinigual”. Patricia was selected and served as a Judge for the 2017 SF Carnaval Parade. She is featured in Jim McCarthy’s book “Voices of Latin Rock.” She is also featured along with other veteran community artists past & present on a mural at Casa Bandido, located at 25th & York Streets in San Francisco and will soon be featured in a book about the Mission District’s artistic community.  Since 2017, she has been leading Key Elements Latin Jazz Ensemble which recorded its debut album, “Arrival” in 2020.  Also in 2020, she was commissioned to create a song about a Mission District Mural, leading to the composition, “Maestra”.  The same year she was commissioned by Music in Place to write a composition inspired by the Pandemic entitled “Next Chapter”.  In 2021/2022 Patricia was commissioned by Jazz In The Neighborhood to perform Livestream concerts at Oakland Public Conservatory with Key Elements.  In 2022 she was a Yerba Buena Center For The Arts grant recipient for Sustainability during Pandemic.  She also was featured in Holly Near’s Digital Archive/Gallery about the history of women’s music.

 

Robin Nzingah Smith

Robin Nzingah Smith has been playing music since the age of six. She studied jazz at the New Muse in Brooklyn, the Creative Music Studio in Woodstock, and Billie Taylor’s Jazzmobile under the tutelage of Frank Foster, Frank Wess, and Bill Baron. Nzingah attended Rutgers University where she received a degree in flute performance. While there, she had the honor to perform with the University Big Band at the funeral of Thelonius Monk. Nzingah’s musical styles run the gamut from Jazz to Salsa, R & B, Funk, and Classical music. She frequently performs with the Oakland Civic Orchestra, the Mary Lou Williams Tribute Band, as well as with Bay Area Funk and Blues legend, Johnny Tolbert. A member of all woman Big Band: “Mary Lou’s Apartment” (a tribute band honoring the music of Jazz Pianist/Composer/Arranger “Mary Lou Williams”), which morphed into: “MELBAS’ KITCHEN”, (all woman tribute big band honoring the music of Jazz Trombonist/Composer/ Arranger “Melba Liston”) & Nzingah has been Co-Director, since 2021. Nzingah has been a dedicated music educator in the Bay Area of San Francisco for over two decades. She teaches band, Jazz, Improvisation, and gives private music lessons.

 

Sue “Suki” Kaye

Sue “Suki” Kaye, originally from NYC and now living in the Bay Area has been playing congas, ngoma, kalimba, and other percussion for over 40 years. She has been deeply influenced by many amazing teachers, studying the music of the Congo, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Brazil, Trinidad and more! Over the years, Suki has performed with many bands, including Azucar con Ache, Rita Lackey and Friends, Liquid Girlfriend, Montuno Groove, Omeyocan, Pura Vida, Zakiya Hooker, Bole Bantu, Azucar y Crema, Samba Ngo, and the Ngoma Players, and is now very excited about playing with this new project-Key Elements. She has had the pleasure of opening the show and sharing the stage with such well-known artists as King Sunny Ade, Sheila E, and Babatunde Olatunji (RIP). Suki has also been a dance accompanist, playing for both classes and performance groups. She is a former member of Taller Bombalele, a Puerto Rican Folkloric group. She is also an educator, teaching elementary, preschool, and after school programs as well as conducting drum workshops for adults and kids. She is on the faculty of Born to Drum, a Bay Area women’s drum camp. Suki also enjoys writing and arranging music and of course playing and being creative with other musicians!

 

Sylvia Sherman

Sylvia Sherman is an alumna from community arts workshops at La Pena Cultural Center and Mission Cultural Center, with a focus on percussion in Cuban music, including opportunities to participate in clinics with master Cuban artists such as Los Muñequitos de Matanzas and Anga Diaz and to study with Bay Area based Michael Spiro and Jesus Diaz.  She brings her experience with percussion to her bass playing and performs with several groups including Key Elements, El Guajiro, Ray Martinez and the Latin OGs and Sinigual.  Sylvia is Program Director at Community Music Center where she works to develop community arts programs for people of all ages.

 

Joyce Baker

Joyce Baker has been playing drums since she was a small child with her famous father “Buddy” Baker. Joyce has played with Lavender Country for many years and recently at SXSW; as well other greats such as Emmy Award Winning Songwriter Lisa Nemzo, Mel Graves, George Marsh, Opie Bellas, Lea DeLaria, Carolyn Brandy, Michaelle Goerlitz, Vicky Grossi, Janice Beard, Mimi Fox and the Cable Car Award Recipients Nicholas Glover and Wray. Joyce has also shared the stage with Con Fun Shun, Jefferson Starship, and ”Blondie’s” Debra Harry. Over the years, she has also been seen and heard with Theatre companies Contra Costa Theatre, Hootchie Doo Productions “Nunsense” series, orchestras with Sonoma Valley Chorale, Contare Con Vivo, and Oakland East Bay Symphony. Joyce is a recording artist and can be heard on multiple CD’s with Amy Meyers, Liquid Girlfriend, Doug Stevens and The Outband, Nicholas, Glover and Wray, D. Anthony, Bad Ass Boots, “Gotta Give me Somethin’,” and Lavender Country’s guitarist Mark Newstetter. By day she is an award winning music teacher in OUSD, and Jazz and Blues Camp for Girls @ the Berkeley Jazz School. By night she can be heard with Lavender Country, Bad Ass Boots, Big O’, Mary Lou’s Apartment, and her own swinging jazz group. Otherwise, she lives with her lovely wife of 29 years, the best dog in the world, Santita, her cat, Sir Lumley, in her hideway home in the hills of El Sobrante.

https://keyelementslatinjazz.com/

~

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.