On March 30th I attended Sarah McKenzie's performance at Copley Auditorium in San Diego. Her piano and vocals were accompanied by a guitar, bass, drummer, and trumpet. In spite of having to compete with the baseball opening series of the Padres and Giants, she filled the venue to capacity with enthusiastic jazz fans. The concert was fabulous and far exceeded my lofty expectations. She is a great talent. In addition to her music, her stories about her career were very entertaining. She had a great rapport with the crowd and showcased her great personality. After the concert, I introduced myself as well as my wife, son, and grandson. She was easy to talk to and very congenial. I am very much looking forward to the in studio interview with Sarah that will be broadcast along with her music in just two weeks.
Sarah McKenzie is a tremendously talented jazz singer, jazz pianist, music composer and music arranger that has a great future. She will be with us to discuss the release of her new album Secrets Of My Heart, to give us the story behind her remarkable career, and to give us inside information about some of the songs from her now five albums.
She is already famous in her homeland of Australia and in Europe.. She has performed around the world including at the Umbria Jazz Festival in Italy and the famous Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland. State side she has played at Boston Symphony Hall with the Boston Pops Orchestra, the Monterey Jazz Festival, at jazz festivals in the bay area, and at the Blue Note in New York. She will be performing at the 37th annual San Francisco Jazz Festival in June. She has worked with Michael Buble and with Chris Botti. Many feel that very soon she is poised to join the rarefied air occupied by superstars Diana Krall and Nora Jones.
I will devote an entire special edition show to this interview and her music. I hope to broadcast this on Saturday April 20th and Wednesday April 24th. I will open our first hour by playing a selection from her brand new album Secrets Of My Heart, just released on March 29th. The second hour will begin with a selection from Sarah McKenzie's previous four albums. Please continue to tune in for more information about this unprecedented event. You will not want to miss this show.
Other new releases to be played on this show include John Novello, Norman Brown, Keiko Matsui, Nelson Rangell, Marqueal Jordan, and Carol Albert with Ragan Whiteside and Magdelena Chovancova.
In the middle of the first hour you will hear the Billboard top three songs in smooth jazz.
In the second half of the first hour, i will play a song that my wife loves, Josh Groban and Jennifer Nettles from Josh’s album Bridges with the song "99 Years".
The second hour of our show is devoted to classics in smooth jazz.
For our close to this show, I have another classic among classics. Smooth jazz keyboardist and pioneer Dan Siegel has been helping to shape the genre since his recording debut in 1980. He is still going strong and released a great album a year ago January, Origins from which we played a lot of selections. His first album was Nite Ride and a couple of songs from that album featured the guitar of Lee Ritenour. From past programs we know that Ritenour ten years later became part of Fourplay. That classic song, Dan Siegel on the keys and the fabulous guitar of Rit is titled Phunkin’.
