Tue 6/11 @ 7PM
Jazz sax player Max Bessesen is from Denver and is currently based in the bustling jazz capitol of Chicago. But between the two, he made a four-year stop in Northeast Ohio, as a student at Oberlin Conservatory (class of 2016).
He was already well-grounded in music when he got there, having played with statewide ensembles and his father’s quintet as a teen. At Oberlin he studied with Gary Bartz and flund mentors in such musicians as Eddie Henderson, Jamey Haddad and Billy Hart. He also began to play with the electro-acoustic group Echoes who have toured the U.S., Canada, India, the Netherlands and released their debut EP Square Two last summer.
Immediately after graduating from Oberlin, he won a grant from the Frank Huntington Beebe Fund — the first jazz musician to win it — to spend six months in Chennai, India, studying South Indian classical music system. He then amplified his research with trips to Cuba and Ghana to apply the system to African Diasporic music. Research completed, he landed in Chicago in the summer of 2017 with its many opportunities for musical collaboration.
He’ll be back in northeast Ohio to perform at Nighttown, joined by pianist Eric Krouse, bassist Ethan Phillion and drummer Nathan Friedman.
Tickets are $15.
Cleveland Heights, OH 44106