Rising star Kazemde George returned to the Bay Area for 9 shows

Between the emphatic title of his debut album, “I Insist”, and the supple velvety tone of his tenor saxophone, Kazemde George has claimed to be one of jazz’s most thoughtful and self-possessed young band leaders.

Raised in Berkeley, educated in Boston, and now part of the thriving Brooklyn scene, George returns to the Bay Area for an eight-show, three-night game 26-28. November as part of the JAZZ @ theEDGE Festival at Black Cat, the jazz club Tenderloin, which has become the region’s indispensable showcase for new New York players.

Like on the new album released last month on trumpeter Dave Douglass Greenleaf Music label, he is joined by vocalist Sami Stevens and bassist Tyrone Allen II. Pianist Chris McCarthy and drummer Kayvon Gordon complete the quintet, which focuses on George’s original compositions and songs written with Stevens.

While she contributed lyrics to the cool carefree “Skylight” and the smoldering reprimand late at night “Happy Birthday,” Stevens’ wordless vocals are prominent on several other pieces. As George’s partner in life and music, “she’s heard me write every single melody I’ve composed,” he said.

“If I’m writing something and I want to add another melodic line, it makes sense to get Sami to come in and do it. She is such a versatile musician, she knows everything I wish she could sing. ”

“Everything stays really open for review,” Stevens added, attending the phone interview on the speaker. “With any given song, there are many possibilities. You could not have me on it or have me as a horn.”

They met at the New England Conservatory when she was in a joint education with Tufts (where she majored in psychology), and he was in a joint program with Harvard and received a bachelor’s degree in neurobiology (and a master’s in jazz composition from the NEC).

George studied with a number of jazz heavyweights, including tenor saxophonist Jerry Bergonzi, pianist Danilo Perez and altoist Miguel Zenón. It was Zenón who recommended George to Dave Douglas, and called his former bandmate in the SFJAZZ Collective to recommend that he check him out.

When the saxophonist was on his radar, Douglas said, “I started seeing his name everywhere in this community of really creative players in Brooklyn, who basically bring in music from all over the world, pop and rock and you name it.”

George had already recorded “I Insist” and was looking for a label. Douglas originally launched Greenleaf Music as an outlet for its own projects, but since 2005 the music company has released more than 80 albums by both well-established masters such as Santa Cruz-bred saxophonist Donny McCaslin and flutist Nicole Mitchell and rising artists such as Japanese shamis playing Emi Makabe and bassist Matt Ulery.

Impressed by George’s compositional vision and ongoing quest to build his own musical identity, Douglas decided to release the album, which is dedicated to the saxophonist’s mother. “There’s the gentleness of the voice in the music, ‘I insist’ in this gentle way,” Douglas said. “His sound is very beautiful and clear. He is an artist who will only get deeper. ”

While achieving his neurobiology degree, George never saw science as a career path. As a child of immigrants – his mother is from Jamaica and his father from British Guiana – “I studied it because my parents are from the Caribbean and they wanted me to get a good education. That’s why we were here.”

But he is quick to point out that his parents have supported his creative ambitions all along. His father loves music, and George grew up listening to Keith Jarrett, John Coltrane and Weather Report, “Brazilian music, calypso and reggae, so many good things,” he said.

The pursuit of educational opportunities took him out of Berkeley. Terrified of the low test scores of black students at Berkeley High, his mother enrolled him in Oakland’s then new MidWest High School (after skipping 8th grade). It was deeply stimulating, “but ironically, I really started playing jazz and I went to school that had no music program.”

Instead, he found mentors at the Oaktown Jazz Workshop, where he studied with trumpeter Khalil Shaheed, the founder of the free after-school program, as well as saxophonist Charles McNeal and pianist Susan Muscarella. At the same time, he started making electronic music under the name KG, B inspired by innovative hip-hop beatmakers J Dilla, Madlib and Flying Lotus.

Many of these influences are evident on “I Insist,” but George still integrates a variety of rhythms and concepts, especially from Afro-Cuban traditions he studied over a year in Havana supported by a George Peabody Gardener Fellowship from Harvard.

“I took classes, walked around and played jazz and sucked as much into myself as I could,” George said. “My Spanish turned out really well. It changed me a lot. ”

George is insistently creative and an ongoing work that has already established itself as an important new voice on stage in the 21st century.

Contact Andrew Gilbert at jazzscribe@aol.com.

---

KAZEMDE GEORGE

With Sami Stevens

When: 19.30, 9. and 22.45 26.-28. November

Where: Black Cat, 400 Eddy St., San Francisco

Tickets: $ 35- $ 45; www.blackcatsf.com