Alan Jones Quartet featuring Tivon Pennicott, Kevin Hays and Joe Martin

Sunday, September 3rd, 2023, 8PM – Alberta Rose Theatre – Tickets $5-45

Festival headliner Alan Jones assembles a dream team of award-winning talent for a concert of original music designed to inspire and challenge.

Tasting notes: audacious, elastic, full-throttle

Born from humble Pacific Northwest roots, Alan Jones has enjoyed a rich performing career both in Portland and across Europe. Beginning his touring career at just 16 years old with Amsterdam-based organist Count Dutch, Alan’s performing career has since grown into an escapade involving some of jazz’s greatest living artists. As a performer, Alan’s discography ranges from local legends such as Jim Pepper and Ralph Towner to international phenomena like Kenny Wheeler and Lee Konitz. His own band, the Alan Jones Sextet, has recorded four albums to date and performs regularly. Alan also leads several other groups, most notably Social Music, which enjoy a regular performing schedule in some of Portland’s most notable venues. Alan Jones’ Social Music presents music “for the people,” aiming to create an atmosphere of refreshment, relaxation, and camaraderie.

The highly sought saxophonist, composer and multi-instrumentalist Tivon Pennicott is a key contributor to three GRAMMY Award-winning albums, appearing on Esperanza Spalding’s disruptive recording Radio Music Society, and Gregory Porter’s Liquid Spirit and Take Me to the Alley. Touring the world with Porter, Pennicott has performed at iconic venues, including The Royal Albert Hall in London, the Berliner Philharmonie in Germany and Carnegie Hall in New York. On screen, he has become a fixture on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” as a regular member of the Stay Human Band with Jon Batiste, an artist with whom he has played a week long engagement at The Village Vanguard.

In 2014, he released his debut recording as leader, Lover of Nature, a project that features equally curious musical minds: Mike Battaglia, Spencer Murphy and Kenneth Salters. His 2020 release Spirit Garden is his most audacious endeavor, featuring a 26-piece string orchestra with several combinations of a chord-less quartet.

GRAMMY Award-winning jazz pianist, composer, and singer/songwriter Kevin Hays’s many recordings have received critical acclaim from The New York Times, Downbeat Magazine and Jazz Times, as well as the “Coup de Coeur” award from the French Académie Charles Cros. Kevin has appeared on numerous albums as a guest artist, recording with Chris Potter, Bill Stewart, Joshua Redman, Jeff Ballard, Nicholas Payton, and Al Foste. Notable collaborations include a piano duo project with Brad Mehldau (Modern Music, Nonesuch), world tours with James Taylor, Sonny Rollins, John Scofield, Joe Henderson, and Roy Haynes. Kevin has become increasingly known as a gifted and expressive singer/songwriter. In 2015 he released the widely lauded recording New Day (Sunnyside), on which he performed his own songs along with a riveting performance of the Jimmy Webb classic ‘Highwayman’.

Joe Martin has established himself as one of the most in demand jazz bassists of his generation. Since moving to New York City in 1994, his supportive, lyrical and harmonically inquisitive playing has led to tours and recordings with artists including Mark Turner, Chris Potter, Gilad Hekselman, Joel Frahm, Dave Kikoski, Michael Leonhart, Brad Mehldau, Kurt Rosenwinkel, Billy Hart, Anat Cohen, Edward Simon, Andy Bey, Donald Fagen, Rudy Royston and many others. He appears on dozens of records as a sideman, notably Mark Turner’s Lathe Of Heaven, Return From The Stars, Potter’s The Dreamer Is The Dream, Rosenwinkel’s The Remedy, Intuit, Hekselman’s This Just In, Homes, SplitLife, and Hearts Wide Open.

As a composer and bandleader he has released three albums. His most recent album Étoilée (w/Mark Turner, Kevin Hays, Nasheet Waits) showcases his compositions and has received much critical praise: “The whole Quartet is remarkedly simpatico…an ideal blend of stylistic variety and artistic consistency” 4 stars-Downbeat Magazine. His other recordings as a leader are Not By Chance (2009) with Chris Potter, Brad Mehldau, Marcus Gilmore, and Passage (2002) with Turner, Hays, and Jorge Rossy.

Born in Kansas City, Martin grew up in a musical family in Pella, IA where he started on cello at age 8, played trumpet in grade school, and by age 15 had discovered the electric bass which led to a deep dive into jazz and eventually the double bass. He studied at DePaul University in Chicago before moving to the NYC area and earning his bachelor’s degree from William Paterson College. He recently earned his master’s degree in jazz arranging and composition from Queens College.

Lineup: Alan Jones, drums, compositions; Tivon Pennicott, tenor sax; Kevin Hays piano; Joe Martin, bass

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