Early December Jazz Is Delightful | Norman Provizer’s Jazz Notes

Houston’s School for the Performing and Visual Arts has produced more than its fair share of extremely strong jazz pianists. Jason Moran and Robert Glasper are among the graduates from the city’s high school for the arts, as is Helen Sung who will be at Dazzle to wrap up this week in music on Wednesday.

Sung’s Denver stop is part of her current CD release tour for her disc Sung With Words that ends on December 13 at the Jazz Standard in New York. A classically trained pianist Sung, the daughter of Chinese immigrants, was captured by jazz at a Harry Connick, Jr. concert when she was an undergraduate at the University of Texas. Before long, she was part of the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz Performance then housed at the New England Conservatory in Boston.

Sung released her first album in 2003 and won the Kennedy Center’s Mary Lou Williams Jazz Piano Competition in 2007. Seven years later, she was on the Concord label with her disc Anthem for a New Day. During this time, Sung has sung with her piano keys with the Mingus Big Band, the T.S. Monk Sextet and drummer Teri Lyne Carrington’s Mosaic Project. A grant from the Chamber Music America/Doris Duke Foundation then gave her chance to create Sung With Words, a collaboration with poet Dana Gioia.

At Dazzle, 1512 Curtis, her Sung With Words band features saxophonist John Ellis, bassist Joe Martin, drummer Rudy Royston (who has made a major name for himself since moving from Denver to the New York area) and singer Christie Dashiell. The band plays on Wednesday at 6:30 and 9 p.m.  (303-839-5100). As an added local note, one of the players with an earlier Sung trio, who recorded with her, is bassist Derrick Hodge who settled in Denver several years ago. Also the great Denver-raised vocalist Dianne Reeves, like Sung, is on Carrington’s award-winning Mosaic Project effort. Reeves is also on stage at the Newman Center for her holiday show on December 6.

In addition to Sung, this week at Dazzle offers music from Bali from the Gamelan Tunas Mekar at 7 p.m. on Thursday, singer Lenny Kaye’s 89^th Birthday Celebration on Sunday at 5:30 p.m. and the David Caffey Jazz Orchestra with a strong lineup of area-based players, including trumpeters Greg Gisbert and Brad Goode and saxophonists Wil Swindler and Peter Sommer. Caffery, who moved to California after his retirement from University of Northern Colorado, celebrates his All in One music at 7 p.m.

Speaking of big bands, the Colorado Jazz Repertory Orchestra with singer Heidi Schmidt performs for the holidays at the Rialto Theater, 228 E. 4^th St. in Loveland, on Tuesday at 7:30 p.m. (970-962-2120). The CJRO is back on December 6 at the Lakewood Cultural Center at 7:30 p.m. Also on December 6, the Denver Jazz Orchestra does its holiday show at Dazzle, while trumpeter Bobby Shew is at Nocturne, 1330 27^th St. on December 6 and singer/guitarist John (son of Bucky) Pizzarelli is at the Soiled Dove Underground on December 7.

As part of the area’s holiday season, Cleo Parker Robinson’s Granny Dances to a Holiday Drum, kicks off Saturday and runs through December 16 at Parker’s studio, 119 Park Ave. West (970-295-1759). There are both evening and matinee shows.  

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