The listing appeared suddenly, like an apparition from the era when Yoshi’s reigned as the Bay Area’s premiere jazz venue.
Looking like a throwback to the century’s first decade, the club’s calendar proclaimed that tenor sax titan Joe Lovano’s Paramount Quartet, featuring Julian Lage, is scheduled to play five shows over four nights, April 7-10.
The announcement was delayed due to a publicity “blackout” provision from Lage’s four-night engagement last month at the SFJAZZ Center, where the Santa Rosa-raised guitar star was finishing his tenure as a resident artistic director.
The other half of the Paramount Quartet is equally formidable, with Panamanian American bassist Asante Santi Debriano and drummer Will Calhoun, a player deeply versed in jazz but best known as a founding member of the rock band Living Colour.
What makes the all-star combo’s run feel like a flashback is that Yoshi’s pivoted after the SFJAZZ Center opened in 2013, deemphasizing jazz in favor of R&B, blues, soul, funky pop and sundry cover bands (hello, Fleetwood Mask). Which isn’t to say the club has forsaken the style that made its international reputation.
About a third of this month’s bookings are bona fide jazz, including alto sax great Gary Bartz, who plays Yoshi’s April 23-24. But a four-night run by a jazz artist seems positively 20th century. In fact, that’s how Lovano first met Lage.
He encountered the 14-year-old guitarist in 1999 when piano legend McCoy Tyner was playing the first half of his annual two-week Yoshi’s residency with an all-star quintet featuring vibraphonist Bobby Hutcherson, drummer Billy Higgins and bassist Charnett Moffett (Lovano is the only surviving member of that mighty aggregation).
“His dad brought him backstage but I’d already heard about him,” Lovano recalled. “Bobby had been talking about Julian.”
A few years later, Lage was Lovano’s student at Berklee College of Music, where the saxophonist was the first artist to hold the Gary Burton Chair in Jazz Performance. Placed in one of Lovano’s ensembles, Lage blossomed from a preternaturally gifted prodigy into a coveted bandmate recruited by Burton, a famously sharp-eyed talent scout, for the vibraphonist’s Next Generation band.
“He’s been playing with John Zorn more recently,” Lovano said, referring to the alto saxophonist, composer and proprietor of the widely respected label Tzadik Records. “I heard him in that context, and it gave me a lot of ideas for this group. It’s a beautiful mix of personalities that can play any tune in any direction.”
At 72, Lovano retains the same spirit of adventure that has distinguished his four-decade career as a bandleader. During his brief but memorable stint with the SFJAZZ Collective he played an essential role in the ensemble’s exploration of music by McCoy Tyner and Wayne Shorter.
While usually thought of as one of jazz’s definitive tenor players, he often plays soprano sax and specially designed tárogató, a Hungarian folk woodwind that he had reconfigured with saxophone-like keys. “When I change instruments, it changes the whole direction of the band,” Lovano said.
The band’s maneuverability flows from the deep ties shared by the players.
Lovano and Debriano, a first-call New York bassist who’s recorded with many of jazz’s most accomplished improvisers, got to know each other in the 1980s playing with avant-garde tenor saxophonist Archie Shepp.
While the bassist was living in Paris he and Lovano performed together in a trio with Will Calhoun, and Debriano and the Living Colour co-founder also played widely in the world-jazz band Circlechant. The impetus behind the Paramount Quartet came from a performance at a 2023 fundraiser for Puerto Rican hurricane relief.
“That explosive, creative set was the springboard leading to the idea of adding Julian and forming this new band,” Lovano said. Debuting at the Village Vanguard in February 2024, the Paramount Quartet is still very much in the process of creation. Each time the group performs, new possibilities manifest.
“The group is developing our repertoire,” Lovano said. “When we played the Vanguard I brought in my original pieces and started to draw from that, but Ravi Coltrane came to hear us one night and we just spontaneously played a suite of five John Coltrane tunes without calling them.”
Another night the band got into a similar mind-meld playing a collage of Ornette Coleman tunes. “Julian fell right into it,” Lovano said. “When you follow the sound, it takes you places. That’s something I learned from Ornette.”
Contact Andrew Gilbert at jazzscribe@aol.com.
JOE LOVANO PARAMOUNT QUARTET
When: 7:30 p.m. Monday through April 9, 7:30 and 9:30 p.m. April 10
Where: Yoshi’s at Jack London Square, 51o Embarcadero West, Oakland
Tickets: $51-$103; yoshis.com