This year’s festival features a venue we’re calling GreenStage Café, where for two nights we turn the Arthur Murray Dance Studio on Water Street into a kind of (legal) speakeasy for some great entertainment in an intimate setting. On Friday, September, 22, we present Jazz @ GreenStage Café with Jonathan Barber and Vision Ahead, an ascendant quintet led by Modern Drummer’s Best Up-and-Coming Drummer of 2018. On Saturday, September 23, it’s Comedy Night @ GreenStage Café, with comedians Beecher and Joe Gerics.
Vision Ahead performs a fresh blend of classic jazz with elements of gospel, rock, soul and fusion. Check out this piece from their concert at the Vermont Jazz Center. Drummer Barber has recorded and toured with Pat Metheny, Terence Blanchard, Christian McBride, Nicholas Payton, Buster Williams, Wallace Roney, Terrence Martin, Jennifer Holiday, Harold Mabern, Steve Davis and others; and performed with the Brooklyn Philharmonic and Erykah Badu at the BAM Opera House. The band features Andrew Renfroe on guitar, Matt Dwonszyk on bass, Taber Gable on piano and Matt Knoegel on saxophone.
Beecher has performed in the Brooklyn, Bijou and Boston comedy festivals and won the Connecticut Comedy Festival. He was a contributing performer to NEWSical the Musical; has recorded segments for the Wendy Williams Show and MTV2; and he appears in HBO’s Vinyl, Gotham on Fox, The Get Down on Netflix and The Jim Gaffigan Show.
Gerics is a founder and owner of the Fairfield Comedy Club, a creator of the Free Standup Festival in NYC, and a regular at the Fairfield Comedy Club and New York Comedy Club.