Hard Bop Collective

Hard Bop Collective at Bird & Beckett marks the centenary of Jimmy Heath — born October 25, 1926 — with a program of tunes written by rhythm-section players. The Bay Area quartet, founded in 2011 and steeped in Art Blakey, Horace Silver and Cannonball Adderley, is fronted here by tenor saxophonist Bob Kenmotsu, who backed Ruth Brown, played in Brother Jack McDuff’s band, recorded with Pat Martino and holds a U.S.–Japan Creative Artists Fellowship. He’s joined by guitarist Jordan Samuels of the Hot Club of San Francisco and the Electric Squeezebox Orchestra, bassist Tomoko Funaki, a Stanford Jazz Workshop faculty member who came to the upright by way of classical violin, and co-founding drummer Austin Harris. Heath, an NEA Jazz Master who played with Dizzy Gillespie and Miles Davis and wrote more than 125 tunes, spent his career as much behind the pen as the horn.