“SFJAZZ Beacon Award Concert”
Mary Stallings with the Marcus Shelby Orchestra
featuring Geri Allen
Friday, November 10 • 8pm
$58
$38
$32
$25
"Perhaps the best jazz singer alive today." —The
New York Times
Program Notes
Each fall,
SFJAZZ honors a member of our community who has played a vital
role in preserving the traditions and fostering the growth of
jazz in the Bay Area. This year’s
honoree, San Francisco native Mary Stallings, is an exemplar
of everything the SFJAZZ
Beacon Award stands for.
Stallings’ career got off to an early start, with the
young singer sharing Bay Area stages with the likes of Ben Webster,
Wes Montgomery, and, most notably, a brief tenure with Dizzy
Gillespie. Soon she was touring with Billy Eckstine and Count
Basie, but with the birth of her daughter (R&B singer Adriana
Evans), Stallings decided to scale back her jazz career in favor
of family time. Though she recorded intermittently throughout
the ‘70s and ‘80s, it wasn’t until the ‘90s,
with her daughter grown, that Stallings returned full-time to
singing. She quickly reeled off a series of accomplished recordings
including Live at the Village Vanguard, the document
of her storied run at New York City’s famed jazz venue,
which prompted The New York Times to call her “perhaps
the best jazz singer alive today.”
Befitting a vocalist of her stature, Stallings will perform
in two unique settings tonight: with a piano trio; and backed
by the stellar jazz orchestra of bassist and educator Marcus
Shelby, named one of the 10 most influential African-Americans
in the Bay Area for 2005. Joining the orchestra tonight is Geri
Allen, who arranged and played piano on Stalling’s Remember Love,
and whom the BBC called an “outstanding” pianist “with
a positive, vibrant touch, and great delicacy of phrasing.”
Personnel:
Marcus Shelby Jazz Orchestra (MSJO)
- Marcus Shelby, bass
- Geri Allen, piano
- TBA, orchestra
