NPC Jazz and Journalism Night: The Music of Trumpet Legend Chet Baker (POSTPONED)

The National Press Club is hosting a Jazz jam session featuring the works of legendary trumpeter Chet Baker on Thursday, March 19 at 7:00 pm, in the Fourth Estate Restaurant. It’s an evening of live music in the tradition of a jazz night club.

Trumpeter Stan Engle, who hails from Baker’s home state of Oklahoma, will headline a quartet featuring acclaimed D.C. jazz musicians including bassist Herman Burney and pianist Peter Edelman. Burney, who has performed internationally and with such notable jazz and popular musicians including Natalie Cole, the Marsallis family (Ellis, Wynton and Bradford), and pianist/educator Marcus Roberts, has been described by Grammy® winning bassist John Clayton as having “the complete package … he is extremely talented, he possesses a reverence for the music, technical ability, and (to top it off) he is a genuinely fine person.”

Born in Paris, France and raised in Northern Virginia, Peter Edelman has been playing blues and jazz piano and composing since age 14. A fixture of the D.C. jazz scene for decades, Edelman has performed with several famed jazz artists including trumpeter Wallace Roney, drummer Winard Harper and baritone saxophonist Cecil Payne. He has performed at the Bohemian Cavers, The Smithsonian, Tabbard Inn and currently performs at Normandie Farms Inn.

Originally from Abilene, Kansas, but currently living in Oklahoma City, Stan Engle has been performing jazz trumpet for three decades in 35 countries, including five tours in China and four in Cuba, where he completed his recent tour this past January. He has performed alongside such jazz luminaries as saxophonist Bobby Watson, trumpeters Ira Sullivan and Cuba’s Arturo Sandoval and Bobby Carcasses, and Cuban jazz flautist Orlando “Maraca” Valle. A devotee of Baker’s music, Engle says that like Chet, he “loves to improvise and sing the jazz standards without referring to the sheet music as much as the music that comes from the heart and soul.”

Heralded as “The Prince of Cool” for his rendition of “My Funny Valentine” and scores of romantic ballads and West Coast cool jazz compositions, Baker, a native of Yale, Oklahoma, started performing at the height of the bebop era in the early 1950s, joining the bands of pioneering jazz saxophonists Charlie Parker and Stan Getz, and gaining greater fame with his collaborations with baritone saxophonist Jerry Mulligan. As a band leader, he grained greater notoriety from his more-than one hundred albums and performing throughout the U.S. and Europe until his untimely death in 1988. Although known for his struggles with addictions, Baker is celebrated throughout the Jazz world for his uniquely restrained, yet intimately cool, romantic sound and his ability to swing with impeccable timing.

The event is $8 for members and $20 for non-members. Heavy hors d'oeurves will be served, which is included in the cover, and a cash bar will be available.