Jazz at the YMI Cultural Center
Featuring NYC jazz vocalist Miles Griffith and pianist Michael Jefry Stevens performing as the Griffith/Stevens Quartet. Sonny Thornton, percussionist, and Mike Holstein, bassist, will round out a program of jazz standards and original compositions.
In 1994, Miles Griffith played the lead role of “Jesse” in Wynton Marsalis’, celebrated Blood On The Fields, the specially commissioned jazz oratorio, which premiered at Lincoln Centers’ Alice Tully Hall. Griffith also participated on the recording, which was released on Sony Music in mid 1997 to end Marsalis’ Pulitzer and Grammy winning world tour.
Griffith’s fearless approach to music has helped him to emerge as a serious contender on the modern jazz scene. Adept in any context, his organic style is adventurous, whimsical, fiery, heart-felt and always on the cutting edge.
Griffith seamlessly weaves together a potpourri of styles illuminating the “down home” fun missing in much of jazz’ current vocal genre. With an instrument poised and mature beyond his years, Griffith is also comfortable with some of the more traditional vocal repertoire. Noted jazz critic, Ira Gitler of Jazz Times states, “Griffith’s balladry bows in the direction of the romantic baritones of the ’40s and ’50s,” while Bob Young of the Boston Herald declares, “his oblique Betty Caterish approach shows off his dark phrasing and penchant for melody.”
Over the past 40 years Michael Jefry Stevens has been in the forefront of the NYC and international improvised music scenes. To date he has released over 80 Cds and has been associated with some of the most important figures in modern jazz including Dave Douglas, Dave Liebman, Mark Feldman, Pheeroan Aklaff and many others.
Jazz at the YMI, Saturday, April 26, 2014 from 7-10 p.m. Admission is $25. Light refreshments provided. YMI Cultural Center, 39 S. Market Street, downtown Asheville. Phone (828) 257-4540 or visit www.ymiculturalcenter.org.
