Jeanne Arland Peterson celebrates her new CD “88 Grand” in honor of her 88th birthday. This two CD set covers Jeanne’s past (recordings from the 1940’s and 1950’s) and present. Recent recordings feature some of her talented offspring; Billy Peterson on bass and Paul Peterson on drums. A singer, pianist, and charmer nonpareil, Jeanne Arland Peterson is the matriarch of Minnesota’s First Family of Music. This amazing talent spent 22 years as a staff vocalist and pianist on WCCO, the Twin Cities largest radio station, all the while playing nightclubs and recording in studios. Jeanne's career has many highlights, including performances with Bob Hope, Sonny Stitt and George Benson, just to name a few. She was one of the first two women inducted into the Minnesota Music Hall of Fame (the other being Judy Garland).

Check out this video of Jeanne at the Jazz Bakery in Los Angeles:

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Our local saxophone masters pay tribute to jazz pioneer Charlie "Yardbird"  Parker. Parker is certainly one of the most influential of jazz musicians.

Parker played a leading role in the development of bebop, a form of jazz characterized by fast tempos, virtuosic technique, and improvisation based on harmonic structure. Parker's innovative approaches to melody, rhythm, and harmony exercised enormous influence on his contemporaries. Several of Parker's songs have become standards, including "Billie's Bounce", "Anthropology", "Ornithology", and "Confirmation". He introduced revolutionary harmonic ideas including a tonal vocabulary employing 9ths, 11ths and 13ths of chords, rapidly implied passing chords, and new variants of altered chords and chord substitutions. His tone was clean and penetrating, but sweet and plaintive on ballads. Although many Parker recordings demonstrate dazzling virtuosic technique and complex melodic lines – such as "Ko-Ko", "Kim", and "Leap Frog" – he was also one of the great blues players. His themeless blues improvisation "Parker's Mood" represents one of the most deeply affecting recordings in jazz. At various times, Parker fused jazz with other musical styles, from classical to Latin music, blazing paths followed later by others.
 
Parker also became an icon for the hipster subculture and later the Beat generation, personifying the conception of the jazz musician as an uncompromising artist and intellectual, rather than just a popular entertainer. His style – from a rhythmic, harmonic and soloing perspective – influenced countless peers on every instrument. Like Louis Armstrong before him, Parker changed the sound of jazz music forever.

The tribute features Dave Karr, Gary Berg and Bob Parsons on Friday night; and Dave Karr, Bradon Wozniak and Pete Whitman on Saturday night.

The rhytmm section includes Chris Lomheim on piano, Adam Linz on bass and Kenny Horst on drums both nights.

BIRD LIVES!            
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 An early set at 7 p.m. features an open jam session lead by Dejen Tesfagiorgis on Saxophones with Adam Meckler on Trumpet, Jesse Mueller on Piano, Adam Tucker on Bass, and Jaky Nyberg on Drums and friends. Dejen Tesfagiorgis leads these weekly jam sessions, bring your axe and sit it! www.youtube.com/watch?v=4khzBPcgo24

Rookai is a group that  takes contemporary music and arrange it to styles of jazz, latin, fusion. The band features vocalist Cassi Meyer - with Kevin Gastonguay on keys, Andy Schuster on Bass, and Jay Augspurger on drums.