Mark Farina at Asheville Music Hall

House legend Mark Farina sets the mood with his own genre coined “mushroom jazz” at the Asheville Music Hall on Friday, December 28. Local group In Plain Sight will open the show.

Mark Farina has a record bag that can set the mood, whether it be to keep a dance floor jumping at 4 a.m., or a chill dinner set to his famous mushroom jazz. Shortly after Mark befriended Derrick Carter in 1988 at a record store in Chicago, his passion for house music, and sharing it with the world, exploded. Mark experimented with a deeper style, dropping De La Soul, disco classics, and other stuff that wasn’t being played in the main rooms of nightclubs.

While exploring his love for the purist forms of house music, Mark developed his trademark style, mushroom jazz: acid jazz infused with the West Coast’s jazzy, organic productions along with urban beats.

Fans embraced Mark’s downtempo style so much that he started a weekly Mushroom Jazz club night in San Francisco with Patty Ryan. In three short years, the club established a fanatical, cult-like following for Farina and the Mushroom Jazz sound. When the doors closed, Farina continued the tradition by releasing a series of CDs, Mushroom Jazz. Since then, Mark has been traveling the globe performing hundreds of shows, to over one million club goers, a year.

His house sets take fans on journeys to the jazzy side of Chicago house mixed San Fran style. Some of these sets have been known to last up to eight hours. And sometimes you’ll find Mark playing in two different rooms at the same party, showcasing his range of rocking the big room sound to the uber-chill.

Opening the show is In Plain Sight, three DJs and producers united towards a global, progressive groove. The “Paris of the South” is a perfect home for the trio, as it’s a renowned creative beacon, drawing artistic types of many persuasions and styles, fostering a zone of constant inspiration.