Ashley Kahn | Art Blakey: The Big Beat of Modern Jazz

($30-$40 tickets | 6:30pm Presentation | 8pm Show) Grammy Award-winning music historian, journalist and educator Ashley Kahn returns to the Century Room for a presentation on the life and legacy of Jazz Messengers bandleader and drummer Art Blakey! Then a sextet of several of Tucson’s best jazz musicians will play a selection of tunes from his illustrious career.

Brice Winston (sax) Jason Carder (trumpet) Max Goldschmid (trombone) Angelo Versace (piano) Scott Black (bass) Arthur Vint (drums)

THE BIG BEAT OF MODERN JAZZ

Art Blakey was a giant of modern jazz — one of the rare drummers who played with every other pioneer and grew to become a bandleader in his own right. He is still celebrated as much for his distinctive musical vocabulary — dramatic press rolls, spicy rim shots, leaning on the hi-hat for the primary pulse — as he is for hiring legions of future jazz stars in his Jazz Messengers group (Wayne Shorter, Wynton Marsalis, and Terence Blanchard are but three headliners who graduated from the University of Art Blakey!) He’s also known as the father of hard bop, the blues-rich style that is the primary flavor of small-group jazz to this day. Who was Blakey and how did he achieve his greatness? What about his breakthrough recordings and this “hard bop” approach that still sounds so modern? The answers to these and other questions — with music, video and live performance — will be answered at The Century Room as a lead-up to the Tucson Jazz Festival on Tuesday, January 14.