About the show:

West African music meets contemporary jazz that enchants and delights.

Subtle, inventive, and full of joy – those are some of the ways listeners have described the piano music of Jed Wilson. A crowd-favorite, Jed is equally at home in the disparate worlds of jazz, free improvisation, and folk music. His virtuoso playing is matched only by his sharp wit and sense of humor on-stage.

Dave Kobrenski is a multi-instrumentalist who has been leaving audiences speechless for two decades with his expressive playing of the Fulani flute, a unique three-holed woodwind with an earthy, raw sound that has been described as “the voice of Africa itself taking flight on the wind.” He also plays the kamale ngoni (a 12-string, bluesy harp/lute from Mali), the calabash, and the djembé.

DAVE KOBRENSKI

Dave has traveled extensively in West Africa to study music with master musicians such as Famoudou Konaté, Sayon Camara, Nansady Keita, and other musicians of the region. During this period of almost yearly sojourns to Guinea, he became proficient on the Fula flute, kamale ngoni (10-string harp from Mali), and djembe drum. His ongoing apprenticeship with a master of the Malinké flute tradition, Lanciné Condé, has already spanned a decade, and he continues that apprenticeship with frequent trips back to villages in the Niger River valley, in the heart of West Africa. Dave weaves his accounts of these voyages into entertaining and enriching cultural experiences for his audiences.

JED WILSON

Jed has been an active performer since his teenage years in Portland, Oregon. He received a bachelor’s degree in jazz performance from the New England Conservatory, where he formed a long-standing musical partnership with jazz vocalist Dominique Eade. The two have toured widely, and in 2006 released a critically acclaimed CD that appeared on many of the year’s top-ten album lists. More recently, Jed has performed extensively with singer/songwriter Heather Masse. The association with Masse has resulted in a host of appearances across North America, including multiple appearances on NPR’s “A Prairie Home Companion.”