Sing A September Song. A Whale & Jazz Event at Gualala Arts
As usual, leave it to Whale & Jazz Festival Music Coordinator Fred Adler to create a musical event perfect for late summer. Plan to attend "Sing A September Song" on Saturday, September 3, and spend time with a group of great musicians performing a priceless Selection of songs. This Labor Day weekend concert will fit perfectly into anyone's holiday plans. Advance tickets are $29 and are available at the Dolphin Gallery, Gualala Arts and EventBrite.com.
Local favorite, pianist Larry Vuckovich and legendary guitarist and vocalist Alvon Johnson will bring back old memories and create new ones with this concert at Gualala Arts' JAMI Amphitheater. The songs selected for this concert will include many favorites, and all of them reaching into the deep history of the great American Jazz and Blues songbook.
Alvon Johnson was a member of the legendary R&B group The Coasters. Johnson has all the chops needed cut a mean B. B. King guitar style, and sing up a sublime storm.
The group will focus on gorgeous twentieth-century American standards and blues, many associated with Billy Eckstine, Joe Williams, Frank Sinatra and Nat King Cole, constructing an historic vocal mosaic.
Larry Vuckovich’s supreme keyboard soulful warmth will both accompany Alvin Johnson and as soloist, take the audience through memorable seminal piano stylists (Ellington, Basie, Erroll Garner, McCoy Tyner) Vuckovich adores and admires the essential past masters of jazz, and can take you there through both commentary and music.
Rounding out the group are top-rated tenor man Steve Heckman, acoustic bass master Buca Necak, drummer Jeff Miniweather, and conga player Hector Lugo. A superb sextet created just for this performance at Gualala Arts and the song selection will bring back memories or make new ones. Expected performances will include "September Song”, “September in the Rain”, “Staring at the Stars”, “Unchained Melody” “Sweet Lorraine”, and more. Fred Adler, Festival Music Coordinator will emcee.
Image (clockwise from top left): Larry Vuckovich, Alvon Johnson, Steve Heckman, Jeff Miniweather, Buca Necak. Not pictured: Hector Lugo.
