There are few experiences extra thrilling than catching a teenage artist on the cusp of renown, and that is the second to savor the emergence of Skylar Tang.
The Foster Metropolis composer and multi-instrumentalist has spent the previous few years as a stand-out trumpet soloist in elite ensembles just like the SFJAZZ Excessive Faculty All-Stars and the Stanford Jazz Workshop 50/50 Jazz Orchestra. She earned a shot of nationwide consideration in 2023 together with her pen when her piece “Kaleidoscope” received Jazz at Lincoln Middle’s Dr. J. Douglas White Composition and Arranging Contest.
Now enrolled at Columbia College and learning music at Juilliard, the 18-year-old Tang is again on the town over winter break and enjoying her first run of gigs across the area as a bandleader. She performs Jan. 10 on the Sound Room in Oakland, Saturday on the SJZ Break Room, and Sunday at Mr. Tipple’s in San Francisco together with her New York quartet.
“This is definitely a first for me,” Tang stated. “I’ve done some one-offs under my own name, but they’ve been lowkey and casual. I put so much thought in this run. This is my first time with my own band. We’re all committed to the same vision.”
Her quartet options Lafayette-raised pianist Brahm Sasner, a bandmate from the SFJAZZ Excessive Faculty All-Stars Massive Band who’s learning jazz on the Manhattan Faculty of Music. She met bassist Ben Halle, a fellow pupil at Columbia, over the summer season in Los Angeles. And she or he’s recognized New Jersey-raised drummer Ben Schwartz since they met in Carnegie Corridor’s Nationwide Youth Orchestra of the USA of America in summer season of 2022.
They bonded on the primary day of rehearsal at Buy Faculty “when we started this conversation about when something is a sauce or a condiment. It’s quite perplexing. Instead of solving the mystery we decided to write some songs,” she recalled, noting that the quartet will likely be performing a number of of the items they devised, like “Habanero,” “a nice, groovy miner blues in 12/8 with a kick.”
Schwartz can also be learning at Columbia, and the quartet has been enjoying collectively a number of occasions per week at neighboring Manhattan Faculty of Music, “becoming really good friends,” Tang stated. “It’s amazing we all ended up in the same place.”
So as to carry her New York band out to the Bay Space with out going into debt she utilized for a grant from YoungArts, a Miami-based basis devoted to supporting artists ages 15-18. The grant might be utilized to assist work of any variety, and for a younger jazz artist there are few experiences extra edifying than embracing the position of bandleader and all its attendant duties.
“I think part of going to college is realizing we can do whatever we want,” Tang stated. “The hard part is deciding what we want. That’s what the whole process of being a bandleader is in a sense. Emailing venues, organizing the gigs, logistics, marketing. That’s all been a huge learning experience.”
Tang closes her Bay Space run Jan. 17 at San Francisco’s Chook & Beckett Books & Data with Sasner on piano, New York bassist Ruby Farmer, and San Jose drummer Sylvia Cuenca, a veteran New York participant with a decades-long observe file accompanying jazz’s best improvisers.
Conserving firm with established masters is nothing new for Tang. San Francisco bass star Marcus Shelby has been hiring her for gigs along with his orchestra since she was 16. And in current months she’s carried out with bands led by saxophonists Kristen Strom and Michael O’Neill.
Saxophonist Dann Zinn, an eminent educator whose former college students embrace award-winning heavyweights like saxophonist Dayna Stephens, Remy Le Boeuf, and Hitomi Oba, directed Tang in the course of the 4 years she was a member of the SFJAZZ Excessive Faculty All-Stars Combo, a breakout group from the orchestra.
She was the youngest within the combo when she began, and the senior member within the 2023-24 season, and Zinn stated with out hesitation that “she’s probably the most brilliant person to go through that program.” It’s not simply her speedy development as a trumpeter and composer, he stated.
“She’s a brilliant musician. She’s got perfect pitch, and she’s also a great pianist and good drummer, a great writer and arranger. Literally she is the entire package. In my combo last year was the pianist and the trumpet and played very difficult things on melodica.”
She’ll be specializing in trumpet for the upcoming gigs, and has been honing a program of authentic tunes and preparations with the quartet, “a lot of songs I wrote for the High School All-Star Combo,” Tang stated. “I love playing this music, compelling, dynamic melodies with open sections we can take wherever we want to go.”
Contact Andrew Gilbert at jazzscribe@aol.com.
SKYLAR TANG QUARTET
When & the place: 7:30 p.m. Jan. 10 on the Sound Room, Oakland.; $25; www.soundroom.org; 8 p.m. Jan. 11 at SJZ Break Room, San José; $20; sanjosejazz.org; 6 and seven:45 p.m. Jan. 12 at Mr. Tipple’s, San Francisco; $15-$25; mrtipplessf.com; and eight:30 p.m. Jan. 17; Chook and Beckett Books & Data, San Francisco; $25; birdbeckett.com
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