Dan Balmer Trio featuring Gary Versace and Mark Ferber

Saturday, August 31st, 2024, 7PM – Strum

Dan Balmer performs music from his latest album When The Night which The New York Times called one of the best albums of 2023.

Tasting notes: virtuosic, heartfelt, moving

From coffee shop gigs at 15 to chart-topping success with the Tom Grant Band in the 90s, world tours with two-time GRAMMY award-winner Diane Schurr from 2006-2010, the 2022 European tour with Pink Martini, and shredding with contemporary jam bands, guitarist Dan Balmer brings heart and fire every time he plays. As an in-demand guitarist and educator, Dan has toured with Joey DeFrancesco, Dr. Lonnie Smith, Les McCann, and Javon Jackson among others while still remaining the first call for many Northwest Portland bands from straight-ahead jazz to the avant garde. Until Covid hit in 2019 Dan averaged playing 200 gigs a year for the past 40 years. Dan has appeared on over 100 albums including 13 as a leader or co-leader where he has presented his unique compositional vision combining disparate musical genres into a meaningful emotional whole.

Since basing himself in NYC in 2000, originally hailing from Cos Cob, CT, jazz pianist, organist and accordionist Gary Versace has become one of the busiest and most versatile musicians on the international jazz scene, often featured in bands led by musicians such as John Scofield, John Abercrombie, Maria Schneider, Kurt Elling, Rudy Royston, Rich Perry, Mike Rodriguez, Regina Carter, Ellery Eskelin, Ray Anderson, John Hollenbeck, Ralph Alessi, Kurt Elling, Anat Cohen, Madeleine Peyroux, Matt Wilson, Ingrid Jensen and many others. Gary appeared twice as a guest on Marian McPartland’s acclaimed NPR show ‘Piano Jazz,’ and McPartland has described him as ‘…endlessly inventive…(Versace) really has an extraordinary talent.’ He has several CD’s under his own name on the Criss Cross and SteepleChase labels, the most recent releases being two piano trio recordings: ‘Time Frame,’ featuring bassist Jay Anderson and drummer Rudy Royston, and ‘All for Now,’ also featuring bassist Jay Anderson with drummer Obed Calvaire. ‘All for Now’ received a 4 star review in Downbeat Magazine and was included in their list of the best recordings of 2020. Versace, along with bandmates vocalist Kate McGarry and guitarist Keith Ganz, was nominated for a Grammy Award in 2019 for his work on ‘The Subject Tonight is Love,’ the band’s latest trio recording, and has performed on several other Grammy winning and nominated recordings by composers John Hollenbeck and Maria Schneider. Currently Versace is the pianist in Schneider’s orchestra after years of playing accordion with the group, and has appeared on dozens of recordings as a sideman on various labels over the years with nationally and internationally known jazz artists. Versace won the Jazz Journalists’ Association’s “Best Instrumentalist – Instruments Rare In Jazz (accordion)” award in 2018, their “Organist of the Year’ award in 2012, and is mentioned yearly in both the readers and critics polls in Downbeat and JazzTimes magazines. Before embarking on his performing career, Versace spent eight years as a tenured Associate Professor at the University of Oregon, and currently teaches in the jazz studies department at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, NY.

Drummer Mark Ferber can be heard on over 200 recordings.  Ongoing projects include ECM recording artist Ralph Alessi’s ‘This Against That’,  the Marc Copland Quartet, the Brad Shepik Organ Trio, and his twin brother, Alan Ferber’s Grammy nominated big band and nonet. He currently maintains a busy freelance schedule throughout Los Angeles’ and New York’s jazz clubs, recording studios, and international touring circuit.  Past work includes tours and recordings with Lee Konitz, Gary Peacock, Jonathan Kreisberg, John O’Gallagher, Don Byron, Fred Hersch, Tony Malaby, Anna Webber, Mark Helias, Pete McCann, Matt Pavolka, Michael Attias and Billy Childs, among others. 

Mark has taught extensively in the United States and Europe.  He has worked as a faculty member for the California Institute of the Arts, the Tavira Jazz Workshop in Portugal, the School of Improvisational Music (SIM), City College of New York, The Maine Jazz Camp and The Lafayette Summer Music Jazz Workshop.  He currently is Professor of Drumset at Cal State University, Fresno.  He was born and raised in Moraga, CA and received a degree in Biogeography from UCLA.  Mark is an endorsing artist for Istanbul Cymbals.  He lives in Los Angeles and Brooklyn.

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