Jazz at the Center
Tribute to Herbie Hancock & Chick Corea
March 13
Music & Arts Community Center
2020-2021 Season Sponsor: Gunterberg Charitable Foundation – Culliton Family
Artists
Paul Gavin, Drums
Brandon Robertson, Bass
Stu Shelton, Piano
LaRue Nickelson, Guitar
Zachary Bornheimer, Saxophone
Set List
Like all things in jazz, this set list is subject to improvisation.
Chameleon
Herbie Hancock
Cantaloupe Island
Herbie Hancock
Watermelon Man
Herbie Hancock
Dolphin Dance
Herbie Hancock
Maiden Voyage
Herbie Hancock
Driftin’
Herbie Hancock
Spain
Chick Corea
Windows
Chick Corea
Herbie Hancock
Herbert Jeffrey Hancock (born April 12, 1940) is an American pianist, keyboardist, bandleader, composer, and actor. Hancock started his career with Donald Byrd. He shortly thereafter joined the Miles Davis Quintet, where he helped to redefine the role of a jazz rhythm section and was one of the primary architects of the post-bop sound. In the 1970s, Hancock experimented with jazz fusion, funk, and electro styles.
Hancock’s best-known compositions include the jazz standards “Cantaloupe Island“, “Watermelon Man“, “Maiden Voyage“, and “Chameleon“, as well as the hit singles “I Thought It Was You” and “Rockit“. His 2007 tribute album River: The Joni Letters won the 2008 Grammy Award for Album of the Year, only the second jazz album to win the award, after Getz/Gilberto in 1965.
Since 2012, Hancock has served as a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, where he teaches at the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music. He is also the chairman of the Herbie Hancock Institute of Jazz (known as the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz until 2019).
Chick Corea
Armando Anthony “Chick” Corea (June 12, 1941 – February 9, 2021) was an American jazz composer, keyboardist, bandleader, and occasional percussionist. His compositions “Spain“, “500 Miles High“, “La Fiesta”, “Armando’s Rhumba” and “Windows” are widely considered jazz standards. As a member of Miles Davis‘s band in the late 1960s, he participated in the birth of jazz fusion. In the 1970s he formed Return to Forever. Along with Herbie Hancock, McCoy Tyner, Keith Jarrett and Bill Evans, he is considered one of the foremost jazz pianists of the post-John Coltrane era.
Corea continued to collaborate frequently while exploring different musical styles throughout the 1980s and 1990s. He won 23 Grammy Awards and was nominated over 60 times.
Gulf Coast Jazz Collective
Paul Gavin
Paul Gavin is a Drummer, Teacher, Composer & Arranger in Tampa, FL. Paul has played regularly with great musicians in the Tampa bay area including trumpet player James Suggs, singer Gloria West, and bassist Michael Ross. He also plays regularly in the Fort Myers area with trumpet player Dan Miller, guitarist Dan Heck, bassist Brandon Robertson, and the Stardust Memories Big Band.
After almost 4 years of supporting others’ musical projects Paul is now focusing on building his own. Paul currently has two bands. The Vanguard plays his original music, and Mosaic plays the music of Art Blakey & The Jazz Messengers.
Paul has received honors for his musicianship as well. In 2013 he was one of the inners of the VSA International Young Soloist Competition and flying out to Washington DC to play with members of the Airmen of Note at the Kennedy Center on the Millennium Stage. In the same year he also won the Downbeat Student award for a collaboration with flutist and composer Jose Valentino. Most recently Paul won a grant from the Young Artists Awards in Fort Myers, FL which will fund the creation of his debut album of his original music.
Brandon Robertson
Brandon L. Robertson is an EMMY® nominated director and notable Upright/Electric Bassist originally from Tampa, FL.
In 2009, he graduated from Florida State University with a Bachelor of Arts in Music with a focus on Jazz Studies. In the same year, Brandon became a member of the popular Florida-based jazz trio The Zach Bartholomew Trio. In 2012, the trio released their first album entitled “Out of This Town”, which received notable reviews from jazz critics. In 2015, Brandon performed at the world-famous Dizzy’s Coca Cola Club in New York City with the nationally recognized FSU Jazz Sextet joining members of the JALC Orchestra.
Aside from being an active musician, Brandon is also an advocate in Jazz/Music Education. Brandon has presented jazz clinics, workshops, masterclasses, and guest performances in schools K-12 throughout Florida and taught at the Florida State University Summer Jazz Camps for Middle school and High school students. In the Spring of 2016, he earned his Master of Music in Jazz Performance at Florida State University. During this two-year period, he directed jazz ensembles, small jazz combos, taught various music-related courses at the University each semester, and performed with traveling national acts visiting the campus. He was also a faculty member of Abraham Baldwin Agriculture College School of Music in Tifton, GA where he taught applied bass and helped assist with the jazz ensemble.
Stu Shelton
Jazz pianist STU SHELTON has been a resident of Southwest Florida since 1989 and has entertained thousands of people in the area. He prides himself on the ability to play left-handed acoustic bass sound, while at the same time playing right-handed piano with an unparalleled musical fluency that absolutely speaks for itself. STU SHELTON is well known among those who enjoy genuine jazz and has a devoted following of fans who enjoy his performances at venues throughout the area.
LaRue Nickelson
LaRue Nickelson is a jazz guitarist and composer from the Tampa Bay area. He has had a varied and diverse music career with many different groups. LaRue has played in New York, Italy, South Africa, New Orleans, Indianapolis, Montreux, and California as well as staying very busy doing festivals and clubs in the Tampa, St. Petersburg, Clearwater, Orlando, and Sarasota, Florida areas. LaRue has performed with Rich Perry, Peter Erskine, Jeff Berlin, Ira Sullivan, Ingrid Jensen, Don Braden, Rufus Reid, Sheila Jordan, Hank Marr, David Leibman, Chuck Owen and the Jazz Surge, Chick Corea, Conrad Herwig, Robbie Ameen, Giovanni Hildalgo, Gary Versace, Walt Weiskopf, Frank Foster, Mike Maineri, Adam Nusbaum, Steve Davis, Marcos Cavalcante, Patrick Bettison, Eric Darius, Mike MacArthur, Bobby Floyd, Paquito D’rivera. He has also recorded with Chuck Owen and the Jazz Surge, The Michael Ross Quartet, Greenwich Blue, Shawn Ashby, Kristen Lomholt, Mark Gould, and Cory Christiansen. As well as recording and performing, LaRue is also a composer with more than 40 compositions to his credit, many of which have appeared on recordings by Greenwich Blue, The Michael Ross Quartet, and his own projects. His has released two solo projects, titled Dark Water and Labyrinthitis featuring his original compositions. His current band performs his many of his original compositions, and the members are Jeremy Powell on saxophone, Joe Porter on bass, and Ian Goodman on drums. Recently, he has completed recording projects with Tom Brantley, Jeremy Douglas, Chuck Owen’s tribute to Michael Brecker, Tom Carabasi featuring the music of Patrick Bettison, and a duo album with Jeremy Powell. He also has written for two Mel Bay anthologies. He is the jazz guitar instructor at the University of South Florida and currently resides in Tampa, FL with his beautiful wife, Joy, and his slightly less attractive cats, Kilgore Trout and Hodor.
Zachary Bornheimer
Jazz composer and saxophonist Zachary Bornheimer’s lyrical improvisations and melody-driven compositions have sparked international and national intrigue with performances in Florida, Chicago, Italy, France, England, and terrestrial radio. Bornheimer was a 2017 Fellow at RSMI’s Program for Jazz and a Y2K Fellow at the University of South Florida, where he earned his MM in Jazz Composition.
Bornheimer’s small and large ensemble works are noted with accolades: his composition “Haunted Lullaby of the Forgotten” is one of the winners of Ravinia’s Bridges competition, he is the first 2x winner of the Owen Prize in Jazz Composition for his composition “Elegy” (2017) arrangement of Donny McCaslin’s “Henry” (which was premiered by McCaslin), and his composition “Color Shift” was both a Finalist for The 2015 Herb Alpert Young Jazz Composer Awards was selected for part of the the International Society of Jazz Arrangers and Composers’ 2017 Symposium for the New Music Workshops. Bornheimer’s has also recently worked as Associate Producer for Maria Schneider’s Grammy-Nominated Data Lords recording.
Bornheimer was a Finalist for the 2017 VSA’s International Young Soloist Award and was selected by Billy Childs, Nathan Davis, and Rufus Reid for the RSMI 2017 All Star Quintet. Bornheimer has performed with Chick Corea, the Smithsonian Jazz Masterworks Orchestra, The Four Seasons (The Modern Gentleman), and saxophonist Jack Wilkins, along with various guest artists while at USF including: Maria Schneider, Rufus Reid, Steve Houghton, Ron Blake, Donny McCaslin, Gary Smulyan, and more. Bornheimer was recently appointed instructor of Saxophone at Eckerd College.
Bornheimer is following in the footsteps of many great composers who have come before him and is working as a copyist as well. He has copied for Tom Brantley, Tommy Goodman, Chuck Owen, Maria Schneider, and others.
Bornheimer has studied composition with Chuck Owen, Dean Eaves, and Maria Schneider, saxophone primarily with Jack Wilkins, Valerie Gillespie, and took a few lessons from Ralph Bowen and Rick Margitza along the way. Bornheimer also studied flute with Valerie Gillespie and Clarinet with Brian Moorhead.
Upcoming Concerts
Jodi Benson, David Burnham, and Marc Cedric Smith perform film and Broadway favorites.
3/14
From the writers who brought you Fiddler on the Roof, it’s the story that inspired “You’ve Got Mail!”
3/26-28
Featuring the Gulf Coast Jazz Collective
4/24
