Hear This

Sam Rivers holds a rare place in the hierarchy of contemporary jazz. Since the late 1950s, he has shared stages with legendary figures across the spectrum, from one-of-a-kind vocalist Billie Holiday and bebop pioneer Dizzy Gillespie to chameleonlike bandleader Miles Davis and out-jazz founder Cecil Taylor. An essential link to the music's early traditions and a spiritual guru to the next-wave avant-garde, Rivers is one of the last living bridges between the old and new schools.

Details

Saturday, Aug. 11

8 p.m.

Tickets are $25

(650) 736-0324

www.stanfordjazz.org

Dinkelspiel Auditorium in the Braun Music Center at Stanford University in Palo Alto

Related Content

• On the 20th Anniversary of Miles Davis' Death, Five Funny Stories About Him You Maybe Shouldn't Believe
  September 28, 2011
• The Top 50 Songs To Get High To
  October 5, 2011
• December Lit Events
  November 30, 2011
• Dine with Famous Dead Folks at the Contemporary Jewish Museum
  June 1, 2011
• Bouncer Ponders the N Word at the Mark Twain Hotel
  April 6, 2011

More About

• Sam Rivers
• Miles Davis
• Dizzy Gillespie
• Cecil Taylor
• Bebop

Like this Story?

Sign up for the Music Newsletter: Keep your thumb on the local music scene with music features, additional online music listings and show picks. We'll also send special ticket offers and music promotions available only to our Music Newsletter subscribers.

Privacy Policy Cancel Continue

A world-class improviser on tenor and soprano saxes, flute, and piano, the 70-year-old Rivers has the energy and imagination of a player half his age. He's also a formidable composer, with over 400 works spanning a startling range of stylistic invention, from updates on familiar jazz forms to complex, forward-pushing atonal structures.

His latest projects include a wildly versatile trio, which jammed Bruno's for a whirlwind three-night stint this past spring, and a Grammy-nominated big band. The trio -- featuring thirtysomething players Doug Matthews on upright bass, electric bass, and clarinet and Anthony Cole on drums, tenor sax, and piano -- moves organically through a mind-boggling variety of instrumental configurations, tight compositions, and free-form astral jams. The big band, which stems from Rivers' late-'70s New York "Loft Scene" associations with instrumentalists like Steve Coleman and Greg Osby, packs the kaleidoscopic punch of the Duke Ellington Orchestra in its prime, with a panoramic vision that's distinctly Sam Rivers.