Velvet Hours

April is National Jazz Month, so jam out with us at BlackRock Center for the Arts. Four weeks, four incredible live performances, four ways for you to sit back, relax, and enjoy the smooth sounds of sax, keys, and more.

Package tickets are available! Select "Jazz Package" at check out to recieve general admission to all four performances. Concessions will be available for purchase.

Marshall Keys, Federico Peña and Mark Prince are a trio of friends who play well together, very well indeed! Playing piano, keyboards and keyboard bass, Peña constructs arrangements on the fly so tunes never sound the same way twice. Marks’ unique style of drumming creates heat with or without fire and Marshall creates sinewy horn lines that respond instantly to the shifting musical topography

“A force of nature on the baritone.” –Adam Narimatsu, CapitalBop
Washington, DC native Leigh Pilzer is a baritone saxophone specialist, composer, arranger, and educator. Her performance resume includes appearances with the Smithsonian Jazz Masterworks Orchestra, The DIVA Jazz Orchestra, the Bohemian Caverns Jazz Orchestra, the National Symphony Orchestra, Baltimore’s Soulful Symphony, and more. She is also a bandleader in her own right, leading the Leigh Pilzer Startet, her all-star quartet/quintet; organ group Leigh Pilzer’s Low Standards; and her latest project, Leigh Pilzer’s Seven Pointed Star. She also co-leads PALS, a duo with bassist Amy Shook and JLQ, the Jen Krupa-Leigh Pilzer Quintet. Pilzer has presented her groups to enthusiastic audience response at top venues including Blues Alley, Keystone Korner, the National Gallery of Art Sculpture Garden, and the Atlas Performing Arts Center, to name a few.

It has been a stellar, 20 plus year career for The Eric Byrd Trio and it would appear they are just getting started: They are winners of The Maryland State Arts Council $10k Independent Artist Award (IAA) for notable artistic achievement. Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan bestowed a prestigious Governor’s Citation upon the Trio, “in recognition and celebration of 20 years delighting audiences across the globe.” Their last recording “Twenty” won the 2022 Washington Area Music Award (Wammy) Jazz Recording of the Year. “Echoes of Arrival” was released in August 2025 with Two for the Show Media, Chris DiGirolamo and Shaunna Machosky, President of Jazzzdog Promotions supporting the release. And they are apart of the prestigious Maryland Performing Artist Touring Roster .
For over twenty years, The Eric Byrd Trio (EBT) have traveled the world as enthusiastic ambassadors of jazz. Rooted in swing and bebop, The Trio also embraces gospel and the blues as core elements of their expansive performance style

Chosen as one of six artists to participate in Strathmore’s Artist in Residence program in 2022-2023, Joshua has been an active and innovative part of DC’s jazz scene since 2019. With explosive energy and a penchant for performing the music of Latin America and the African diaspora, Joshua has been playing the piano since he was seven years old, and began performing in public at the age of twelve. A proud alum of the Duke Ellington School of the Arts in Washington, D.C., he holds a Bachelor’s of Music from Temple University, where he studied classical Piano Performance and Spanish. Alongside fellow Ellington students, he performed on stage at the Kennedy Center and Strathmore Music Center with artists such as Ledisi, Patti LaBelle, and Sting.

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Nestled in the Germantown Town Center, BlackRock Center for the Arts (BlackRock Center) stands as the leading venue for performing and visual arts in Upper Montgomery County, MD. We are dedicated to enriching our community by providing accessible and high-quality cultural and creative experiences to the most diverse unincorporated city in the country. BlackRock programs include free art galleries featuring exquisite exhibitions, exceptional live performances, an art supplies thrift store, and a wide range of arts education classes designed for all ages and skill levels.

Event Venue & Nearby Stays

BlackRock Center for the Arts, 12901 Town Commons Drive, Germantown, United States

Concerts, fests, parties, meetups - all the happenings, one place.

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