Date/Time
Date(s) - 01/16/2025
7:30 PM - 10:00 PM
Location
SFJAZZ Center
Category(ies)
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This edition of Terence Blanchard’s UpSwing series focuses on a pair of superb award-winning saxophonists, composers, and bandleaders, Tia Fuller and Grace Kelly.
A masterful saxophonist and composer possessing “the brilliance of a diamond” (DownBeat), Tia Fuller has divided her remarkable career into two full-time halves, as an accomplished and uncompromising bandleader and as a collaborator to the stars.
Called “the future of jazz” by NPR, 25-year-old saxophonist and vocalist Grace Kelly is a seven-time winner of the Downbeat Critics Poll and has risen to be a major jazz star, appearing with Jon Batiste and Stay Human on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert and on concert stages around the world. A soulful soloist with a warm, burnished tone and a preternatural gift for composition and arrangement, Kelly began her musical journey while still a youth, writing her first song at seven and releasing her 2005 debut album, Dreaming, at 12. Innumerable accolades and collaborations followed that auspicious start, as the young saxophonist appeared with the Boston Pops at age 14 and performed by Wynton Marsalis’ request at the inauguration festivities for President Obama, sharing in the stage with jazz icon Dave Brubeck. She’s led nine full-length albums including GRACEfulLEE in collaboration with NEA Jazz Master Lee Konitz and Man With the Hat with fellow NEA honoree Phil Woods, and participated in the Kennedy Center’s 15th Annual Mary Lou Williams Women In Jazz Festival as part of an all-star band including Dee Dee Bridgewater, Esperanza Spalding, Geri Allen, and Terri Lyne Carrington. Kelly performs in support of her new album, Trying To Figure It Out, which was voted the #2 Jazz Album of the Year in DownBeat’s 2016 Readers Poll.
Presented by SFJAZZ