This is a big week for jazz lovers over at Dimitriou’s Jazz Alley. And it all kicks off tonight as The Cookers bound on stage for a two night set.

This group has five critically acclaimed recordings under their belt. But if you aren’t familiar with The Cookers, you’ll undoubtedly know the players that make up this super group septet.

The band is comprised of some OG, hard bop jazz masters of the 60s.  Billy Harper (tenor sax), Eddie Henderson (trumpet), George Cables (piano), Cecil McBee (bass), and Billy Hart (drums) all came up in the hard bop era and carved out names for themselves as they propelled the genre forward, and beyond.

David Weiss (trumpet) and Jaleel Shaw (alto sax) round out the group. They may be the “kids” on the bandstand, but both Weiss and Shaw draw from their deep experience playing alongside the likes of Art Blakely, Roy Hanes, Herbie Hancock, and others.

The Cookers are just coming off a successful stand at Birdland in New York. This is a rare opportunity for Seattle to hear some straightforward, hard-driving jazz from the masters who laid down the foundation for the post-bop era.

The Cookers

Show times: Tuesday and Wednesday at 7:30pm

Following The Cookers, another heavy hitter takes the stage at Jazz Alley. Joshua Redman, whose first quartet took the jazz world by storm in the 90s, hits up Seattle for a four night run March 23 – 26.

The son of saxophonist Dewey Redman and dancer Renee Shedroff, Redman’s path from Ivy League graduate to jazz great is well documented. After he graduated from Harvard, Redman took a pass on Yale Law School to hit the New York jazz scene.  More than 20 albums and eight Grammy Award nominations later, Redman has clearly cemented his standing as one of the pillars of jazz to come out of the 90s.

The Trio

Although the members of the original quartet (Redman, Brad Mehldau, Christian McBride, and Brian Blade) recently got together to record LongGone, Redman is in Seattle with his trio which includes Larry Grenadier on bass and Marcus Gilmore on drums.

But, there is still a connection to that quartet. Besides playing with early jazz greats such as Joe Henderson and Stan Getz, bassist Larry Grenadier has spent decades playing alongside one of the original Redman quartet members, pianist Brad Mehldau.

And, as the grandson of the renowned jazz drummer Roy Haynes, Marcus Gilmore brings his own lofty lineage to the trio as well.

Redman has been out on tour playing works by three legendary jazz composers – Duke Ellington, Thelonious Monk, and Wayne Shorter. The Jazz Alley set may prove to be a bit different than his recent gigs, perhaps a bit more free form and less standards. The one constant that will carry over is the lack of a piano to lay down the chords.   

As Redman noted in a recent interview with Style Weekly, “There are a lot of songs I’ve written that I won’t play in a trio because they need the chords to be explicitly spelled out. But I have found that Ellington, Monk, and Shorter wrote great melodies where the harmony is implied, even if the notes are not played.”

Whatever Redman brings to the bandstand this weekend, it will prove to be the perfect capper to a hard driving, and memorable week of music at Jazz Alley.

Joshua Redman Trio

Show times: Thursday – Sunday at 7:30pm with second sets on Friday and Saturday at 9:30pm