BELLOWS FALLS, Vt. – Julian Gerstin Sextet will be at Stage 33 Live, 33 Bridge Street in Bellows Falls, Vt., on Sunday, Sept. 29, at 7 p.m. Tickets are available in advance through www.stage33live.com, or at the door. Advance tickets guarantee entry. There is limited seating, and the performance will be recorded and filmed.
Julian Gerstin has spent a lifetime playing the music of the Caribbean, Africa, the Middle East, and the U.S. – funk, R&B, and jazz. He’s lived and studied in Martinique, Cuba, and Ghana, mastering dozens of percussion instruments and hundreds of traditional rhythms. On a given song you might hear him playing congas, jawbone, an enormous beaded shaker, or the tanbou drum of Martinique, on which he sits and uses his heel to change the pitch.
Gerstin founded the sextet to bring his wide range of instruments and influences to a jazz setting, where they serve as a platform for his fellow musicians’ creativity. The group includes some of New England’s most creative talents: clarinet virtuoso Anna Patton; versatile trumpeter Don Anderson; pianist Eugene Uman, who, like Julian, ranges across traditions, and from funky grooves to experimentalism; bassist Wes Brown, whose career spans gigs with early jazz master Earl “Fatha” Hines to avant-gardists like Wadada Leo Smith and Anthony Braxton; Ben James, who was John Tchicai’s drummer for several years, and can both swing and go wild.
This is global jazz – music with lively Caribbean drums and sparkling trumpet, velvety clarinet and muscular piano. Music by turns lyrical and humorous, intense and peaceful, grooving and thoughtful, and always surprising.