It’s Jazz Appreciation Month, and Tempe Center for the Arts celebrates with two concerts.
On April 23, renowned jazz, blues and gospel singer Leonard Patton teams with the critically acclaimed Danny Green Trio to form LP & The Vinyl, sending pop and R&B favorites through a kaleidoscope of jazz.
The result is familiar music kicked up a notch by incredible improvisation.
LP & The Vinyl has created an uncommon and personal approach to music-making that is infectious. Combining re-imagined renditions of favorite hits by artists that include Stevie Wonder, The Beatles and David Bowie, fresh and funky explorations of jazz standards and original songs, this group leaves audiences energized.
Rock out to their funky beats with a rare and up-close opportunity to sit with the band on TCA’s main stage as they perform their hits.
“Pianist Danny Green has done creative things in trio settings, and this one with vocalist Leonard Patton takes the next journey forward,” writes George W. Harris for Jazz Weekly.
Dan McClenaghan of All About Jazz writes that the shows “are exhilarating affairs, with Patton covering everything from Stevie Wonder to Michael Jackson to David Bowie.”
Tickets to the 7:30 p.m. concert are $25 and available at tempecenterforthearts.com.
And then, on April 30, TCA presents Lisa Fischer in a 7:30 p.m. Jazz Month concert. Tickets, priced at $35 and $45, are available at tempecenterforthearts.com.
After four decades of featured background singing with icons like Luther Vandross, the Rolling Stones, Chaka Khan, Tina Turner, and Nine Inch Nails, Fischer takes center stage with her own humble, heartfelt concert. Along with JC Maillard and Grand Baton, the organic fusion of Caribbean psychedelic soul and jazzy progressive rock has ignited her flexibility and freedom of expression, awakening her lifelong desire to make music that heals and rocks the house.
Fischer is known for her remarkable vocal range, which allows her to be equally adept at jazz, soul, gospel, pop, folk and classical. Perhaps her greatest gift, though, is Fischer’s ability to connect with and reach the hearts of her listeners.
“Anyone familiar with Fischer’s work will know that she sings with immense vocal dexterity. She brushes lightly, harnesses low and rich tones, and soars into spectacular and resonant highs. She can navigate a vocal line with jazz sensibility, and even operatic inflection,” The House That Soul Built wrote in a review.
Stephen Holden of The New York Times wrote of her, “With a nearly vibrato-less, gospel-oriented voice that stretches high into the stratosphere and a strong, steady middle register, Ms. Fischer effused a pure joy and sometimes a pure anguish in the kind of singing that is rarely heard nowadays outside of church.”
