BEGIN:VCALENDAR VERSION:2.0 PRODID:-//www.yoshis.com/oakland//NONSGML kigkonsult.se iCalcreator 2.10.5// X-WR-CALNAME:www.yoshis.com/oakland X-WR-CALDESC:www.yoshis.com/oakland X-WR-TIMEZONE:US/Pacific BEGIN:VEVENT UID:20130619T031511CEST-0724W8lTIg@www.yoshis.com/oakland DTSTAMP:20130619T010611Z DESCRIPTION:\nAs Spyro Gyra contemplates upcoming milestones to its storied career\, it&rsquo\;s tempting to fall back on the Grateful Dead lyric\, &ldquo\;What a long strange trip it&rsquo\;s been&rdquo\; to describe it. During that time\, they have performed over five thousand shows\, releas ed twenty-nine albums (not counting &ldquo\;Best Of&hellip\;&rdquo\; comp ilations) selling over ten million albums while also achieving one platin um and two gold albums. These upcoming milestones include 2012\, which wi ll be thirty-five years since their first album release and 2014 will be forty years as a band. They show little sign of wanting to slow down eith er\, gaining Grammy®\; nominations for each of their last four albums. Born in Brooklyn\, bandleader Jay Beckenstein grew up listening to the mu sic of Louis Armstrong\, Charlie Parker\, Sonny Rollins and Dizzy Gillesp ie\, and started playing the saxophone at age seven. Beckenstein attended the University at Buffalo\, starting out as a biology major before chang ing to music performance (read classical and avant garde). During summer breaks\, he and an old high school friend\, keyboardist Jeremy Wall\, pla yed gigs together back on Long Island. Wall attended college in Californi a\, and after both graduated\, Beckenstein stayed in Buffalo&rsquo\;s thr iving music scene\, where Wall eventually joined him.\n"\;Not many pe ople know it\, but Buffalo was like a mini Chicago back then\, with a smo king blues\, soul\, jazz\, even rockabilly scene\, of all things\,"\; Beckenstein muses. "\;After being confined to classical music for so long\, it was heaven. I was in the horn sections around town\, backing s ome great vocalists."\;\nSpyro Gyra\, whose odd name has since become world famous\, was first known simply as &ldquo\;Tuesday Night Jazz Jams\ ,&rdquo\; a forum wherein Beckenstein and Wall were joined by a rotating cast of characters. Tuesday just happened to be the night when most music ians weren&rsquo\;t playing other gigs to pay their bills. Around this ti me\, a young keyboardist named Tom Schuman began sitting in when he was o nly sixteen years old. This young man\, of course\, remains a member to t his day.\n"\;Don't forget the interminable Dead-like solos we were ta king\,"\; Beckenstein cracks. "\;We were the kings of self-indulge nce\, but eventually we earned our right to charge a quarter at the door. It was a complete shock when word of our psychosis got out and we starte d packing them in!"\;\nThe group&rsquo\;s increasing popularity &ndas h\; combined with the purchase of a new sign for the club &ndash\; prompt ed the owner to insist that Beckenstein come up with a name for his band. &ldquo\;It began as a joke. I said &lsquo\;spirogyra\,&rsquo\; he misspe lled it\, and here we are thirty years later. In retrospect\, it&rsquo\;s okay. In a way\, it sounds like what we do. It sounds like motion and en ergy.&rdquo\;\nIn their earliest days\, Spyro Gyra took their cues from W eather Report and Return to Forever &ndash\; bands whose creative flights were fueled by a willingness to do things that had never been done befor e. &ldquo\;I believed that we were springing from what Weather Report did \,&rdquo\; says Beckenstein. &ldquo\;I never thought in commercial terms. I just thought they were the next step in the evolution of jazz\, and tha t we would be part of it.&rdquo\;\nThe first few years saw the group&rsqu o\;s identity split into a dynamic live act and a producer centric record ing process\, borne out of the rotating cast of characters in the jazz ja m beginnings. These albums were the product of the band and a great numbe r of the top session players in New York. In 1983\, Beckenstein made the decision to make the albums the work of the band members he shared the st age with night after night\, only supplementing with occasional guests. There were several personnel changes in the 1980&rsquo\;s\, which slowed down about twenty years ago. \; Julio Fernandez became the group&rsqu o\;s guitarist in 1984 and\, except for a short hiatus at the end of that decade\, has continued in that position. Scott Ambush became the band&rs quo\;s bass player in 1991 making this the beginning of his third decade in the band. Bonny Bonaparte joined the band in 2006 making him the &ldqu o\;new guy&rdquo\; at five years.\n"\;When we first started\,"\; B eckenstein recalls\, "\;a lot of the jazz purists got on our case abo ut calling what we did jazz and now it's funny to hear us getting respect from the same people. Like\, wow\, what you guys did was so much more in triguing than some of the stuff they hear today&hellip\; Art manifests it self in a multitude of styles and contexts. Isn't that why we started to play in the first place?"\;\nIn 1977\, they foreshadowed the DIY movem ent of the punks of the 1970&rsquo\;s by self-releasing their eponymous de but album. Spyro Gyra was picked up by Amherst Records\, a local label wh o then made a deal for subsequent albums to go to Infinity Records\, a la bel owned by MCA Records. After gaining Infinity its only gold (soon to b e platinum) record with Morning Dance\, Infinity folded and the group wa s picked up by MCA Records. There they stayed until MCA acquired noted co ntemporary jazz label GRP Records. Spyro Gyra moved to GRP in 1990 and pu t out all but one of their 1990&rsquo\;s output on that label. In 1999\, they released a single album\, Got The Magic on Windham Hill Jazz. The &l dquo\;aughts&rdquo\; had them returning to an indie mode\, licensing thei r albums to Heads Up International. Most of those Heads Up albums have si nce returned to the band as self released independent releases. 2011 sees them returning to Amherst Records in Buffalo with A Foreign Affair.\n&ldq uo\;My hope is that our music has the same effect on the audience that it does on me\,&rdquo\; says Beckenstein. &ldquo\;I&rsquo\;ve always felt th at music\, and particularly instrumental music\, has this non-literal qua lity that lets people travel to a place where there are no words. Whether it&rsquo\;s touching their emotions or connecting them to something that reminds them of something much bigger than themselves\, there&rsquo\;s t his beauty in music that&rsquo\;s not connected to sentences. It&rsquo\;s very transportive. I would hope that when people hear our music or come to see us\, they&rsquo\;re able to share that with us. That&rsquo\;s the truly glorious part of being a musician.&rdquo\; DTSTART:20121017T200000 DTEND:20121018T220000 DURATION:PT3H LOCATION:Oakland SUMMARY:Spyro Gyra END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR