Name: Bass Meets Voice
Start: 2024-09-16T19:00:00-05:00
Location: Storm Cellar

Jazz vocalist Jackie Allen and bassist Hans Sturm have been making music together for over 35 years. They first met at UW Madison as undergraduates and began performing as a duo in speakeasys and coffeeshops. After drifting apart for a few years, the duo reconnected and began to perform again – appearing at the opening night of Chicago’s Symphony Center and at the Fringe Festival in Edinburgh. Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra’s composer-in-residence, Frank Proto, heard the duo in Scotland and produced the duo’s first recording Landscapes: Bass Meets Voice for the Red Mark label. Their second recording, The Nebraska Project (2021), features a suite of homages to great historic Nebraska musicians, including Fred Astaire, Neil Hefti, Ann Ronnell and more.
Described as “utterly distinctive and even innovative” by Billboard Magazine, Jackie Allen is renowned for her transcendent interpretations. Signed to the iconic Blue Note label by Bruce Lundvall, she made three recordings for the label followed by another ten more over the next decade for such labels as Naxos, Big Chicago, and Avant Bass. Her BlueRay/CD Jackie Allen Live at the Rococo (2019) was picked up by PBS and shown in over 30 markets nationally. Her extraordinary talent has taken her on multiple tours of Europe, Morocco, Brazil, China and Taiwan. Nationally she has toured both coasts and in-between appearing in Los Angeles at Catalina’s, San Francisco at Yoshi’s, San Diego at Humphrey's, and New York City at The Blue Note and The Josef Papp Public Theater. She was featured artist with the Chicago Jazz Philharmonic in Chicago’s Millennium Park and Auditorium Theater for Ella Fitzgerald’s 95 Birthday Celebration. She has performed international festivals in Detroit, Chicago, Paris, The Hague, Stuttgart, Edinburgh, Bologna, Beijing, Hong Kong, Thessaloniki, Sao Paulo and more. Regionally, she has appeared in Denver, Louisville, Cincinnati, Indianapolis, Cleveland, Minneapolis, Milwaukee, Omaha and Chicago.
President of the International Society of Bassists (ISB), Hans Sturm, has taught and toured on six continents as a symphonic, jazz, and chamber musician. He has contributed performances and compositions to over fifty jazz and chamber music recordings including releases on Blue Note, Music & Arts, Cadence, Innova, CRI, and Red Mark. He has served as Chair of the American String Teachers Association Bass Competition, and on the juries of the ISB International Solo, Jazz, and Composition Competitions, as well as on juries for various competitions in France, Italy, and Brazil. He is the producer of the award-winning Art of the Bow with François Rabbath, the first pedagogical DVD to incorporate user-selectable camera angles and biomechanics animations. His major teachers include Ferdinand Maresh (Philadelphia Orchestra), Anthony Bianco (Pittsburgh Symphony), Richard Davis (University of Wisconsin), Jeff Bradetich (Northwestern University), and François Rabbath. Hans currently serves as the Hixson Lied Professor of Double Bass and Chair of the String and Jazz Areas at the University of Nebraska - Lincoln. He also is the Director of the Meadowlark Music Festival.