Jazz at the Sequoia Room - Mark Lewis Quartet

Mark Lewis Quartet
Saturday, January 20

One dinner show at 7:30 pm with 2 – 45 minute sets and an intermission Dinner seating begins at 6:15 pm
Please arrive no later than 7 pm

This trio is made up of: Mark Lewis – sax & flute, Keith Saunders -piano, Peter Barshay – bass, and Jimmy Gallagher – drums

Seattle area native Mark Lewis is a well-traveled saxophonist and flutist who has created a large body of jazz music over the past four decades. He’s been a part of jazz scenes from Seattle and San Francisco to Rotterdam and Paris. Boasting a multifaceted career stretching back to the mid-1970s, Lewis has also thrived as a producer,engineer, educator, and entrepreneur. But The New York Session showcases his command as a player and his abiding gift for crafting memorable tunes that beg for improvisational extrapolation. From the opening track “Koan,” an ethereal melody for flute influenced by Lewis’s experience playing Japanese end-blown bamboo shakuhachi, the album offers a succession of settings designed to unleash his collaborators’ abiding lyricism. In Lewis’s hands, less really is more. “There’s nothing wrong with a simple melody,” he says.“They’re hard to write, and can often lead to some of the best playing.”