Shows & Events

University of Michigan Jazz Showcase with special guest Kenny Barron

The Ark 316 S. Main, Ann Arbor, MI, United States

This show features students and faculty from the Department of Jazz and Contemporary Improvisation at the U-M, along with a prominent special guest each year. This year’s special guest is pianist Kenny Barron. Honored by The National Endowment for the Arts as a 2010 Jazz Master, Kenny Barron has an unmatched ability to mesmerize audiences with his elegant playing, sensitive melodies and infectious rhythms.

$15

The Great Guitars

The Ark 316 S. Main, Ann Arbor, MI, United States

The Great Guitars™ traces its colorful heritage back to the 1970’s when the legendary jazz guitarists of that era toured the world and recorded together. Award-winning guitarist Martin Taylor, who replaced Herb Ellis to become part of the original group in the 1980’s with the legendary Barney Kessel and Charlie Byrd, has revised the format for the 21st century, enlisting two of today’s top jazz guitars players to co-create a brilliant program displaying guitar mastery, emotion, humor and musical fireworks.

$35

Special Event

Jesse Cook

Royal Oak Music Theatre 318 W 4th St, Royal Oak, MI, United States

For Jesse Cook, music has been a journey. Sonically and literally.

“Over the years, I’ve taken my music and tried to cross-pollinate it with music from different parts of the world,” explains the 50-year-old global-guitar virtuoso. “For the (2003) album Nomad, I went to Cairo and recorded with musicians there. On my (2009) record The Rumba Foundation, I went to Colombia, and worked with musicians from Cuba as well. On (1998’s) Vertigo, I went down to Lafayette, La., and recorded with Buckwheat Zydeco. For me, the question has always been: Where did you go? Where did you take your guitar?”

$29.50, $39.50, $49.50

Smithsonian Folkways artist Jerron Paxton

The Ark 316 S. Main, Ann Arbor, MI, United States

Jerron Paxton is an American musician from Los Angeles, now living in New York City. A vocalist and multi-instrumentalist, Paxton's style draws from blues and jazz music before World War II and was influenced by Fats Waller and Blind Lemon Jefferson. According to Will Friedwald in The Wall Street Journal, Paxton is "virtually the only music-maker of his generation — playing guitar, banjo, piano and violin, among other implements — to fully assimilate the blues idiom of the 1920s and '30s, the blues of Bessie Smith and Lonnie Johnson."

$35

Kat Edmonson

The Ark 316 S. Main, Ann Arbor, MI, United States

Kat Edmonson is a Songwriters Hall of Fame award-winner. She has been  featured on Austin City Limits, Tiny Desk Concerts, A Prairie Home Companion, and The Tonight Show and has released six studio albums to date. Raised on the music and film of the early-to mid-twentieth century, Kat performs original songs and familiar classics in her live show  interweaving humorous anecdotes and philosophical musings with disarming candor and  vulnerability. “Hearing Edmonson makes it virtually impossible to do anything but stop and listen.” (NPR) 

$25