WBGO presents All That Jazz concert series, a unique series showcasing some of the genre’s most talented and respected performers, featuring the return of 13-time Grammy nominated band Spyro Gyra, back by popular demand! This series is a partnership between WBGO, UCPAC, and Smooth Jazz NJ.
Enjoy an evening of jazz fusion, beginning in the WBGO Piano Lounge. Come early to enjoy cocktails and live piano music on the Fazioli piano before the performance – doors open one hour before showtime.
Spyro Gyra has long been known to its peers in the contemporary jazz world as a “well-oiled road machine” due to its relentless schedule of 48 years of performing. To date, they have logged more than 10,000 shows on six continents and released 35 albums, garnering platinum and gold records along the way. Spyro Gyra rose from humble beginnings in Buffalo, New York in 1974 to their current international prominence in the jazz world. Every year, they continue to exhibit how to remain among a relative handful of artists who will be able to say that they have worked constantly in their 50 year career in the year 2025. Their energy and joy in concert match their unmatched musicality.
Spyro Gyra, whose odd name has since become world famous, was first known simply as “Tuesday Night Jazz Jams,” a forum wherein bandleader Jay Beckenstein and keyboardist Jeremy Wall were joined by a rotating cast of characters. Tuesday just happened to be the night when most musicians weren’t playing other gigs to pay their bills. Around this time, a young keyboardist named Tom Schuman began sitting in when he was only sixteen years old. This young man, of course, remains a member to this day.
“Don’t forget the interminable Dead-like solos we were taking,” Beckenstein cracks. “We were the kings of self-indulgence, 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 started packing them in!”
The group’s increasing popularity – combined with the purchase of a new sign for the club – prompted the owner to insist that Beckenstein come up with a name for his band. “It began as a joke. I said ‘spirogyra,’ he misspelled it, and here we are fifty years later. In retrospect, it’s okay. In a way, it sounds like what we do. It sounds like motion and energy.”
Don’t miss your chance to see this incredible band in this intimate setting!
