Triple Showcase At West Bank Cafe 1/10-1/11

Triple Showcase at the West Bank Café to Feature Michael Wolff Trio, Creole Jazz Serenaders with Don Vappie, and the Red Clay Ramblers January 10th and 11th.

Events are open to the Public, and Part of APAP Conference as well.

Three incredible bands will deliver two nights of top-notch music, with January 10th and 11th showcases at the West Bank Café in NYC: The Michael Wolff Trio, featuring Victor Jones and Chip Jackson, will preview Wolff's infectious, upcoming CD, "Joe's Strut," his first new album of straight-ahead instrumental jazz in five years.

Direct from New Orleans, Don Vappie, "the banjo's Jimi Hendrix," leads the acclaimed Creole Jazz Serenaders.

The Tony Award-winning Red Clay Ramblers will offer an eclectic mix of genres in their classic "road-house band" style, including selections from their Off-Broadway hit, "Lone Star Love."

The shows will be open to the public, and will be part of the Annual Association of Performing Arts Presenters (APAP) Conference as well.

January 10th and January 11th, 2009
8pm & 10pm shows each night
Venue: West Bank Cafe
Address: 407 42nd Street, between 9th & 10th
Venue Phone: 212-695-6909
For Reservations: 718.680.6287
Tickets: $20 - cash only

Press Quotes:
"Michael Wolff has some of the most expansive vision of anyone working in jazz today." All About Jazz

"The Red Clay Ramblers, a musical group whose eclectic repertory is that of a fantasy roadhouse band from a vanished rural America ... whose music making is perfection." The New York Times

"Vappie is someone the world deserves to know better. When I first saw Vappie play, I thought: 'Oh, so the banjo has a Jimi Hendrix.'" The Times-Picayune

More about Michael Wolff:
On 'Joe's Strut,' pianist Michael Wolff delivers his most accomplished, nuanced and forthright jazz album to date. His rich history of collaboration with such venerable artists as Cannonball Adderley, Nancy Wilson, Cal Tjader, Thad Jones-Mel Lewis Orchestra, Sonny Rollins, Wayne Shorter, Tony Williams, Christian McBride (and many others) embraces a new face, as Special Guest saxophonist Steve Wilson is invited into the studio for some brilliant horn contributions. The CD also features Wolff's regular trio: Rich Goods and Chip Jackson (both of whom share the bass chair,) and drummer Victor Jones. Ian Young also makes an appearance as Special Guest on tenor sax. This is a subtle, mature record, which features five original tracks by Wolff, out of eight overall. Release date is February 10, 2009, and a sampling can be heard here:

http://www.SethCohenPR.com/player/michaelwolff/.

"We went down into the cave of jazz and improvisation," comments Wolff, and the results are evident in the soulful songs. Of the infectious, uptempo title track, Wolff says, "This song was written for the memory of the great composer and keyboardist Joe Zawinul, who was a friend of mind since I joined Cannonball Adderley's band in 1975Š.He formed the groundbreaking WEATHER REPORT, and changed jazz forever, along with Miles and a few others who were experimenting with mixing rock and world music into jazz." http://www.michaelwolff.com/

More about The Creole Jazz Serenaders with Don Vappie:
Don Vappie and The Creole Jazz Serenaders have been described as "the band that brings fresh life to the traditional jazz repertoire."

This 8-piece group, using imaginative and challenging arrangements, blends classic jazz, Creole, and Caribbean-flavored tunes, while also exploring jazz's African and Creole influences. The band has played The New OrleansJazz and Heritage Festival every year since their first performance in 1996; they have excited audiences across the country at such diverse venues as St. Louis' Sheldon Concert Hall; the National Folk Festival, New York's Joe's Pub and Carnegie Hall.

The band has recorded four CDs ­ Creole Blues, (picked as one of Offbeat Magazine's essential Louisiana CDs), Swing Out, Banjo A La Creole, and In Search of King Oliver. They have performed Vappie's classic jazz orchestral arrangements with the Corpus Christi Symphony, premiered the newly discovered Jelly Roll Morton compositions, and appeared in the PBS documentary American Creole: New Orleans Reunion. Don Vappie, known throughout the jazz world for his virtuosic and unique style on the the tenor banjo, is a regular guest with Wynton Marsalis and Jazz at Lincoln Center. http://www.vappielle.com/CreoleJazzSerenaders.html

More about the Red Clay Ramblers:
From the band's website: The Tony Award-winning Red Clay Ramblers are a North Carolina string-band whose repertoire reflects their roots in old-time mountain music, as well as country, rock, New Orleans, bluegrass, gospel, and the American musical. In 1993, the Irwin-Shiner-Ramblers hit Fool Moon on Broadway earned the Ramblers their second Drama Desk nomination for Outstanding Music in a Play, and Fool Moon in Los Angeles set box-office records; Fool Moon went on to run abroad in Vienna and Munich, returned to Broadway for a second success in late 1995, and had a third Broadway run(Brooks Atkinson Theater, Nov. '98-Jan. '99). Fool Moon enjoyed a 5-week run at the Kennedy Center, DC, Feb.-Mar. '99, and received a Special Tony Award, Gershwin Theater, New York, NY, on June 6th, 1999. The Ramblers' long association with music and theater also includes the original New York productions of Diamond Studs (1975) and Sam Shepard's A Lie of the Mind(1985). In 1988, the Red Clay Ramblers scored Mr. Shepard's film Far North, and they perform and appear in his second feature, Silent Tongue (Tri-Mark, 1994). The Ramblers have been guests numerous times on Garrison Keillor's "A Prairie Home Companion" and have appeared nationally with Jay Leno (NBC-TV "Tonight"), Harry Smith (CBS-TV "This Morning") and Candice Bergen (ABC-TV "AM-America"). They have toured extensively in North America and in Europe, and have made four USIA concert tours, to eastern Europe, sub-Sahara Africa, North Africa and the Middle East.

The Ramblers developEd Kudzu: A Southern Musical, in collaboration with Pulitzer-winning cartoonist Doug Marlette, and staged the show at Duke in Durham, NC (Feb. '98) and Ford's Theatre in Washington, DC (Mar.-June '98). Over the years, the Ramblers have performed with such figures as '98 Grammy-winner Shawn Colvin (a Red Clay Rambler for most of '87), Ralph Stanley and the Clinch Mountain Boys, Eugene Chadbourn, Ireland's Boys of the Lough, Randy Newman (recorded "Ride, Gambler, Ride" with him for the film Maverick), and Michelle Shocked (who brought the Eagles' Bernie Leadon and a mobile studio to North Carolina to record with the Ramblers). All along, members of the Ramblers have been involved separately in diverse creative projects, including children's works for the Repertory Theatre of St. Louis, the celebratory Carolina musicals King Mackerel, Cool Spring, and Tar Heel Voices, as well as scoring for The Discovery Channel and for such independent films as John Sayles' The Secret of Roan Innish and Nick Searcy's Paradise Falls [Best Feature, Hollywood Film Festival, Aug. '98]. Continuing their long relationship with the theater, the Ramblers' show Fool Moon ran at the Geary Theater, San Francisco (July-August '01) and their musical Lone Star Love: the Merry Wives of Windsor, Texas ran at the Ohio Theater, Cleveland, (October-November '01)and in New York, Off-Broadway in 2004 and 2005, as well as at Seattle's Fifth Avenue Theatre in September 2007. The band has composed and performed scores for two ballets, Ramblin' Suite with the Atlanta Ballet in 2002 and Carolina Jamboree with the Carolina Ballet in 2005, reprised June 2008. http://redclayramblers.com/