Some concerts disappear into the night. This one becomes a record.
Acclaimed bassist and composer Avery Sharpe brings together pianist Zaccai Curtis and drummer Yoron Israel for a rare evening captured live for a forthcoming album, with surprise guests joining them along the way. The audience won’t simply hear the music. They’ll become part of the album.
Sharpe has spent a lifetime at the center of American jazz. Raised in Springfield and coming of age musically at UMass Amherst, he went on to a two-decade association with the great McCoy Tyner, appearing on more than 20 recordings with the pianist and performing with artists including Dizzy Gillespie, Art Blakey, Archie Shepp and Pat Metheny. Tyner once summed up Sharpe’s playing in two words: “Impeccable Rhythm.” As a bandleader and composer, Sharpe has built a body of work all his own, moving easily between the intimacy of a jazz trio and ambitious works for orchestras, choirs and chamber ensembles.
For this recording, Sharpe is joined by two musicians with whom he shares a deep musical connection. Pianist Zaccai Curtis, winner of the 2025 Grammy Award for Best Latin Jazz Album, brings a musical language shaped by both jazz and Afro-Caribbean traditions; his credits range from Eddie Palmieri and Donald Harrison to Christian Scott and Cindy Blackman Santana. Drummer Yoron Israel has recorded and toured with an extraordinary lineage of artists including Sonny Rollins, Ahmad Jamal, Horace Silver, Abbey Lincoln, Roy Hargrove and Joe Lovano, while leading his own ensembles and serving as Chair of Percussion at Berklee College of Music.
But the reason to be in the room is what hasn’t happened yet. A live recording preserves the choices musicians make in real time: the turn nobody planned, the conversation that suddenly catches fire, the moment a guest walks onstage and sends the music somewhere new. With Sharpe, Curtis and Israel at its center and special guests still to be revealed, this is a chance to hear a new Avery Sharpe album before it is an album, and to become part of the night that gives it life.
Event venue
HOPE Center for the Arts, 150 Bridge St, Springfield, MA 01103, United States
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