St. Petersburg Jazz Festival #3 Claudia Quintet

The Friday evening concert of the St. Petersburg Jazz Festival features the Claudia Quintet from New York!

Formed by drummer/composer John Hollenbeck in 1997, this NYC ensemble’s sound continues to explore the edge without alienating the mainstream, proving that genre-defying music can be for everyone. Their singular sound has inspired dancing participants at a New Mexico noise festival, the avant-garde cognoscenti in the concert halls of Vienna and Sao Paolo, and a generation of young musicians worldwide. In the course of the thousands of miles they have traveled together and hundreds of concerts they’ve played, the Claudia Quintet has evolved and grown, developing a dynamic live sound based on trust and spontaneity.

Over the past decade, the group has released six CDs that are critically acclaimed worldwide and whose appeal extends well beyond, as well as including traditional jazz audiences. The group has established a long time relationship with the Cuneiform label, releasing five albums with them.

The personnel for this concert includes John Hollenbeck - drums, Drew Gress – bass (John Abercrombie, Uri Caine, Ravi Coltrane); Matt Moran – vibraphone (Slavic Soul Party, Mat Maneri, Nate Wooley); Red Wierenga – accordion (Respect Quartet, Signal, Brad Lubman); and Chris Speed – clarinet and tenor saxophone (Uri Caine, Endangered Blood, Alas No Axis) and Fabian Almazan - special guest pianist.

The performance of John Hollenbeck and the Claudia Quintet, presented by EMIT in collaboration with South Florida Composers Alliance, for Subtropics and the Timucua Arts Foundation, is supported by Presenter Consortium for Jazz, program of Chamber Music America funded through the generosity of the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation.