The Muck’s JazzFest returns after a lost year
by Patty Marsters
pattym@lwsb.com
Fullerton’s Muckenthaler Cultural Center resumes its annual celebration of jazz music after having to cancel last year’s concert series because of the pandemic. The Muck Annual JazzFest: Spring 2021 will be held on Thursdays, starting today, May 13, in the center’s outdoor amphitheater at 1201 W. Malvern Ave.
“Our stage will be graced by world-class performers, people who feed their soul by playing for a crowd,” said Muck CEO Farrell Hirsch. “And they’ve been unable to do that for a year or more.
The six-concert series kicks off with Cow Bop, featuring Bruce Forman. The band’s sound is described as a “Californian take on jazz.” Notably, in 2004, they released “Swingin’ Out West,” a musical chronicle of their travels along the storied Route 66.
On May 20, the LA Jazz Quartet, featuring acclaimed guitarist Larry Koonse, takes the stage. The group specializes in instrumental standards, including Latin jazz, mainstream, swing, ballads and blues.
The legendary Barbara Morrison appears on May 27. The founder of the Barbara Morrison Performing Arts Center and the California Jazz & Blues Museum, both located in Leimert Park, has been featured on more than 20 recordings and performed with such luminaries of the jazz and blues worlds as Dizzy Gillespie, Ray Charles, Etta James and Terence Blanchard.
The following week, Grammywinning pianist Bill Cunliffe reimagines Oliver Nelson’s beloved, 1961 album “Blues and the Abstract Truth, Take 2” with the help of Kye Palmer, Brian Scanlon, Jeff Ellwood, Mark Ferber and Francisco Torres.
On June 10, the seven-piece jazzgroupHolophonorbringtheir original works to the Muck. Band membersJoshJohnson,MikeCottone, Miro Sprague, Dave Robaire, Jonathan Pinson, Eric Miller and Diego Urbano all studied at the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz Performance at UCLA under the tutelage of Herbie Hancock and Wayne Shorter, among others.
The series concludes with a performance by the Donny Most Orchestra on June 17. Most, probably best known as Ralph Malph on the TV show “Happy Days,” fuses swing music with ’50s-era jazz.
“There’s an audience that hungers for the joy of live music,” Hirsch said. “We expect the collision of these two forces to be a joyous release of energy.”
Tickets must be purchased in advance via the box office or themuck.org and are $35 per performance or $150 for the series. (Tickets purchased for the 2020 festival were automatically rolled over to the 2021 series.) Seating is limited, and all guests will be required to wear masks and employ social distancing.
