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Frank Kimbrough and Noah Preminger

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Redwood Jazz Alliance hosts piano veteran and saxophone prodigy at the Graves

The Redwood Jazz Alliance partners with the Humboldt Arts Council to bring veteran New York pianist Frank Kimbrough and rising star saxophonist Noah Preminger to Eureka’s Morris Graves Museum of Art on Thursday, February 25.
With his 2008 CD *Dry Bridge Road, the twenty-five-year-old tenor saxophonist made one of the most celebrated entrances in recent jazz history.  (The album was named best debut of the year by everyone from Slate to the Wall Street Journal.)  Raised in Connecticut in a family of jazz enthusiasts, Preminger studied at the New England Conservatory, then came to New York sounding (in the words of Jazz Times columnist *Nate Chinen) “less like an upstart than a natural arrival.”  Though his playing has drawn comparisons to modern giants like Joe Lovano and Joshua Redman, his sound is distinctive and personal, drawing on everything from Coltrane to Classic Rock.  Yet for all his critical laurels, Preminger is remarkably modest, and he has consistently sought out experienced and judicious elders—foremost among them pianist and composer Frank Kimbrough.
Kimbrough, whose influences range from lyrical players like Bill Evans to modernists like Andrew Hill, has long been respected by peers and critics as a “musician’s musician,” an original composer, and a nimble improviser, with a spacious, sometimes ethereal sound.  His once low profile has risen in recent years, thanks in large part to his key role as a soloist in the Grammy-winning Maria Schneider Orchestra (where he has held down keyboard duties for over fifteen years) and a series of acclaimed albums as a soloist, duetist, and bandleader.
Originally from Roxboro, North Carolina, Kimbrough started piano at three and was his church organist by the age of twelve.  He eventually made his way north to New York, where he strove to make a career as a solo pianist before meeting bassist Ben Allison, with whom he founded two groups:  the Herbie Nichols Project, a repertory ensemble dedicated to unearthing, performing, and recording the music of the neglected pianist and composer, and the Jazz Composers Collective, which Kimbrough calls “a coalition of simpatico players dedicated to furthering the development and performance of original music.”  The JCC’s core members, including saxophonists Ted Nash and Michael Blake and trumpeter Ron Horton, have in the New York Times’ opinion “been responsible for some of the most consistently creative albums of the past decade.”  Kimbrough’s own eighth album as a leader will be released on the Palmetto label on March 30th.

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