A Many Splendored Week of Live Jazz | Norman Provizer’s Jazz Notes

Talk about your variety packs. During the current week in music, Dazzle has: one of the outstanding female jazz singers on the scene, Jane Monheit, wrapping up her two-night stand on Thursday, while a strong voice in the new wave of players who both push the envelope and tuck some folk elements from around the world into that envelope, clarinetist/saxophonist Chris Speed, plays on Saturday. On top of that, the superb French bassist Francois Moutin is at the club on Wednesday in a duo with singer Kavita Shah and the great jazz master Benny Golson hangs out at Dazzle with his tenor saxophone on Tuesday.

Recently, Monheit, who rose up the female-vocal charts has we entered the 2000s, has focused in on Ella Fitzgerald’s classic “songbook sessions” with her 2016 disc The Songbook Sessions: Ella Fitzgerald. She and her long-time trio perform on Thursday at 6 and 8:30 p.m. (303-839-5100). Moving from the mainstream songbook, clarinetist/saxophonist Speed, who was born in Seattle in 1967, has followed his own songbook path, working with his own groups, folks like Tim Berne, Dave Douglas, John Zorn and Myra Melford and great bands on the order of the Claudia Quintet.

Along with his on-the-edge efforts, he has also followed the path of Balkan music, including time with the Slavic Soul Party. Speed may not be the most well known name about, but he certainly a mighty player. At Dazzle, Speed also has a mighty trio in tow with New York bassist Chris Tordini and the man who propels the Bad Plus, Dave King, on drums. The trio plays at 6:30 and 9 p.m. on Saturday. 

Saxophonist Golson, who is a leader in creating tunes that become jazz standards (think, “I Remember Clifford,” “Killer Joe,” “Stablemates,” “Whisper Not,” “Blues March” for starters), is at Dazzle with a quartet that includes New York pianist Sharp Radway. That quartet, with Paul Romaine on drums and Ken Walker on bass, is on stage on Tuesday at 6 and 8:30 p.m. It’s always nice to have a National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master come through town and Golson received that honor in 1996. The former Jazz Messenger and co-founder of the Jazztet was also the subject of the 2004 movie The Terminal with Tom Hanks. The Moutin/Shah duo plays the day after Golson, Wednesday, at 6 and 8:30 p.m. The duo’s new disc is called, appropriately, Interplay. 

Also at Dazzle, trumpeter Gabriel Mervine has a quartet on stage on Friday at 6 p.m., followed by Free Bear (created by bassist Patrick McDevitt and drummer Alejandro Castano) at 9 p.m. And then, there’s also the visiting pianist Matthew Whitaker with a trio that has Ted Morcaldi on bass and guitar and Sipho Kuene on drums. The trio takes the stage at Dazzle on Sunday at 5:30 and 8 p.m.

On the big-band front, the Colorado Jazz Repertory Orchestra (CJRO) is at the Parker Art Center, 20000 Pikes Peak Ave. in Parker, on Friday revisiting the great Charlie Parker’s recordings with strings. The orchestra with strings from the Parker Symphony Orchestra is in the Schoolhouse Theater at 7:30 p.m. (303-805-6800). And wait until you see what’s coming down the road.

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