Boiler House Jazz ONLINE: Bob Toabe (piano) and Edmar Colón (saxophone)
YOUTUBE LINK: https://youtu.be/KZY2H2ucBB8
BOB TOABE
youtube.com/BobToabe
As a young boy Bobby played along the rocky New England seacoast. It was as though the salt air and ocean waves filled him with music, imbuing his creativity with a natural song and rhythm. Even as a child, his prodigious musical improvisation, rich in emotional content brought recognition and praise from music teachers and concert audiences alike. As an early adolescent, he ventured from the piano to wind, voice, strings, and a wide assortment of percussion instruments. It was in the theatre however, as the youngest member of the Boston-based Performing Arts Repertory Company, where he developed a potently creative stage, music & performance style. By high school, the ever-industrious musician found himself forming a variety of eclectic improvisation groups, influence by a broad range of contemporary jazz, classical, and international music. He listened to Keith Jarrett, Chic Corea, Bach, Debussy, Miles, and Coltrane. However, more than anything else it was his early personal meetings at age15 with McCoy Tyner and Pharaoh Sanders that forever moved and inspired the direction of his music. Today his original and fluid piano style captures concert audiences with a sound that is rich, sweet, and hypnotic. What I want most (in my music) is deep and free-flowing emotional content. I want my audience to move with me over the keyboard...letting the music flow through us like a soft sweet breeze, like an ocean wave...seeking expression of our deepest needs, our essential selves.
EDMAR COLÓN
Edmar Colón is a saxophonist, pianist and composer from Coamo, Puerto Rico, currently living in Boston.
Colón was awarded the prestigious Presidential Scholarship and graduated from the Berklee College of Music with a dual major in Performance and Classical Composition. As part of his undergraduate studies, Edmar was a student at the Berklee Global Jazz Institute directed by Danilo Pérez and Marco Pignataro. He went on to complete his Master’s degree in Global Studies at the Berklee Global Jazz Institute. Edmar has toured and played in venues and events such as the Detroit Jazz Festival, Puerto Rico Heineken Jazz Festival, Toronto Jazz Festival, Panama Jazz Festival, Montreal Jazz Festival, and Monterrey Jazz Festival, among others. He recently played in the Kennedy Center for the Arts Mary Lou Williams Jazz Festival, Abbey Lincoln tribute tour with Grammy-award recipients Terri Lyne Carrington, Esperanza Spalding, Dianne Reeves and Dee Dee Bridgewater. Colón has performed with artists such as Joe Lovano, John Patitucci, Danilo Pérez, Danny Rivera, Hal Crook, Kenny Werner, Lionel Louke, John Michel Pilc, Patti Austin, Ledisi, Judith Hill, David Sanchez, Arturo Sandoval, George Garzone, Luis Enrique and Ivan Lins, among other notable artists of various musical genres.
In 2016, Colón was awarded the Latino 30 Under 30 Award New England from the El Mundo newspaper. He was also awarded first prize at the "Keep An Eye" International Jazz Awards in Amsterdam as a part of the Berklee Global Jazz Institute. In 2017, he was honored in the annual Patron Saint festivities of his hometown of Coamo, Puerto Rico. As a writer in the last two years Edmar has worked with some of the biggest names in Jazz. In 2018 Colón was the copyist for Wayne Shorter’s newest orchestral work, an opera. During the same year Edmar was commissioned to write a 30 minute long orchestral piece for the Detroit Jazz Festival Symphony Orchestra. Also in 2018, he wrote the orchestrations for the piece “12 Little Spells” of Esperanza Spalding’s most recent album by the same name. On December of that year, Edmar worked as copyist/arranger for the Kennedy Center Honors award ceremony honoring Wayne Shorter. In addition, the young saxophonist worked as the arranger/orchestrator for Terri Lyne Carrington’s upcoming album.
Today, Edmar Colón is working on an orchestral commission by the National Symphony Orchestra for a number of concerts celebrating the centenary of Nat King Cole, as well as working on original material with a new working band for his debut album as Saxophonist and Composer.
The Boiler House Jazz Series is underwritten in part by
JazzGeneration, a project of KeyedUp.org
The Boiler House Jazz Series is made possible by your voluntary financial support. Please give what you can. Any amount will be appreciated.
SUGGESTED DONATION: $20
All donations are shared equally by the ARTISTS, the MUSEUM, and DINE AID WALTHAM, a fundraising effort to support the local restaurant community
Dine Aid Waltham is a fundraising effort led by the Charles River Museum of Industry and Innovation to support independent Waltham restaurants and their employees who are under extreme financial stress due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Inspired by a tradition of supporting causes through music, the Museum is committing its three Spring 2021 concert series to help the local restaurant community.
One third of all the funds contributed by donors and sponsors via the concerts will go to
Dine Aid Waltham.
The funds directed to Dine Aid Waltham will be split evenly between the Waltham Waiters COVID Relief GoFundMe supporting Waltham restaurant employees and the restaurants themselves.
