Weather Wayne
Back in the summer of 2010 my good friend from SFJAZZ, Mike Charlasch, asked me to put a group together as part of an SFJAZZ series at Amnesia in the Mission. I had a choice of Michael Brecker or Wayne Shorter, both of whose music, of course, I deeply love and admire. I chose to put together a band in the spirit of Wayne, because he is, in my view, the greatest living American Composer, jazz or otherwise, and I especially thought it would be a blast to do a concert focusing on the incredible body of work he wrote or was associated with from Bitches Brew through High Life, including the great Weather Report years, the work with Nascimento and Herbie and the incredible solo record Atlantis. We called the group Weather Wayne, and it seems to have caught on. Really, being someone who writes a LOT of music in a lot of different styles, I am not a likely suspect to lead an homage group, but Wayne, well, that is different. We have a fantastic time, and have already played, in addition to Amnesia, Coda, Jazzschool, Capps and Yoshi's Lounge, Armando's, Fillmore Street and SFJAZZ at Stanford Center, among others. The regular group is made up of Matt Clark on keyboards, Dan Feiszli on fretted and fretless bass, John Mader on drums, Marquinho Brasil on percussion and me, Mikey Z, on tenor and soprano sax. It is our honor and privilege to play this music and we have a helluva good time doing so! Here is a cool video SFJAZZ made of one of our gigs, plus two very fun shoots done at Moondog Studios, so enjoy!