This year’s edition of Nate Najar’s Jazz Holiday features a line-up of local and international jazz stars and promises to be one of the best shows of the year at the Palladium.
Nate starts with some of our favorite local players, including birthday boy John Lamb, (We’ll be celebrating his 85th on Jan. 6), along with La Lucha’s Mark Feinman, on drums, and James Suggs, on trumpet. He’s also landed two international jazz artists, Adrian Cunningham, a virtuoso on sax, clarinet and flute, along with alto sax star Dmitry Baevsky.
Adrian Cunningham
Cunningham brought his quintet to the Side Door in November and wowed the crowd with a his old-school approach to jazz, his charisma and his singing voice. He’s an Aussie who is at the forefront of swing dance movement that sweeping the world. He is the star of dozens of national and international jazz festivals that feature young people doing modern versions of the Lindy Hop.
He was the headliner and most talked about artists at the last two Suncoast Jazz Classics. I caught a set last November at the Classic of Adrian channeling Bobby Darin.
“Adrian’s a singular talent that combines strong musical values and a great sense of communication and style. When you see him play, you not only love everything he plays you want to have a beer with him afterwards,” Nate told me.
Dmitry Baevsky was born in that other St. Petersburg, and spreads his time between New York City and Paris. He and Nate met during Nate’s French tour earlier this year, and when they discovered he was playing multiple dates in NYC in December, Nate signed him up for our Holiday show.
“Not a lot of people play the alto sax these days,” Nate said. “Dmitry is one of the finest alto players I’ve ever heard past or present.”
Daniela Soledade
So the horn section is a power-house – Suggs on trumpet, Baevsky on alto sax, and Cunningham moving between flute, clarinet and sax.
But that’s not all the surprises Nate’s serving up on Dec. 13.
He recently discovered singer and guitarist Daniela Soledade, who hails from Rio. She is a recent transplant to the U.S. and she’ll be joining this amazing band on some bossa nova classics. The show will also feature tunes from Nate’s holiday album for Woodward Avenue Records, Christmas in December, and excerpts from the Ellington Nutcracker.
And after looking over this line-up I realize that except for the time I’m out introducing the show, our Hough Hall stage will be filled with beautiful people!
Tickets are going fast for this one. Get yours by calling our box office at 727-822-3590 or follow this link for on-line tickets and information.
Our entire December lineup is supported this year by our friends at Duke Energy.
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