Mel Martin’s life, legacy celebrated
Wes Montgomery, Dizzy Gillespie, Boz Scaggs, Freddy Fender, McCoy Tyner — those are just a few of the artists with whom the versatile Bay Area saxophonist, flutist and composer Mel Martin performed and recorded in a long, productive career that ended in November, when he died of a heart attack at his home in Novato at age 75.
Born and reared in Sacramento, Martin was at the vortex of the fluid San Francisco jazz and rock scene in the 1960s and ’70s and can be heard on dozens of recordings by musicians as varied as Cuban percussionist Mongo Santamaria, Texas roots rocker Doug Sahm and the cross-dressing disco ’n’ soul diva Sylvester.
A founding member of the Escovedo brothers’ Latin jazzrock fusion band Azteca, Martin organized Bay Area groups for visiting jazz stars like Tyner, Gillespie and Benny Carter. He also led several notable bands of his own, including Listen, the vital fusion band featuring players like steel pan virtuoso AndyNarell, and Bebop & Beyond, whose members included such sterling musicians as saxophonist John Handy and the late drummer Eddie Marshall.
Many of the musicians who played in those and other settings with Martin over the decades — including alto saxophonist Gary Bartz, pianist Denny Zeitlin, drummer George Marsh, guitarist Randy Vincent, bassists Robb Fisher and Jeff Chambers, and flutist Roger Glenn — are expected to be on hand July 29 to perform at the Bach Dancing & Dynamite Society in Half Moon Bay for “Mel Martin: A Celebration of his Life in Music.”
Hosted by Martin’s family, the show was put together by Todd Barkan, the producer and 2018 National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master award winner who ran San Francisco’s storied Keystone Korner club.
Proceeds from the event will benefit the nonprofit Enriching Lives Through Music, which works with children in San Rafael’s mostly Latino canal district.
Martin, who contributed to the soundtrack of “Rumble Fish” and to Zeitlin’s score for “Invasion of the Body Snatchers,” was featured at the Bach and other venues last year in performances toasting what would have been Keystone’s 45th anniversary.
“Mel was the standard-bearer for jazz music in the Bay Area for four or five decades, the keeper of the flame,” says Barkan, a fan of Martin’s fervent playing and of his saxophone website, where Martin served up interviews he conducted with masters like Wayne Shorter and Stan Getz, and where “he would post saxophone solos every day of the year.”
Barkan has bittersweet feelings when he recalls last summer’s Keystone concerts, when he last saw the saxophonist. “Mel played his ass off,” he says.
Zeitlin, who was also on those shows, has written a ballad for Martin that he plans to play at this celebration, which also features musicians from Martin’s quartet and big band.
For more information, go to www.bachddsoc.org.
Mars in view
As the Earth moves between the sun and Mars on July 30, the red planet will be at the opposite end of the sky from the sun, an occurrence called opposition. Mars will be as near as it has been to Earth in 15 years and ready for its close-up. That night, according to the scribe at Oakland’s Chabot Space & Science Center, “Mars rises as the sun sets, remains up all night, and by midnight reaches its highest point in the sky.”
From 10:30 p.m. that night to around 2:30 a.m. the next morning (weather permitting), the space center plans to host a “Mars Closest Approach to Earth” event on the observation decks, with astronomers and telescopes focused on the mysterious red orb.
For more information, go to www.chabotspace.org.
Next-generation jazz musicians
The 2018 installment of the Monterey Jazz Festival’s Next Generation Jazz Orchestra, featuring top high school talent from around the country, is scheduled to perform at Coventry Grove Amphitheatre in Kensington on July 21 before taking off the next day for Japan.
The orchestra, whose alumni include such prominent Bay Area-raised musicians as Patrice Rushen, Benny Green, Joshua Redman and Donny McCaslin, shares the bill with the California Jazz Conservatory All-Stars.
For more information, go to www.montereyjazzfestival.org.
City Arts lineup
You can buy tickets now for City Arts & Lectures eclectic fall and winter programs, which include conversations with writers Gary Shteyngart (Sept. 12), Susan Orlean (Oct. 17) and Jonathan Franzen (Nov. 27); actress Sally Field (Sept. 28); Pulitzer Prize-winning legal scholar James Forman Jr. (Dec. 13); and Stockton’s smart young mayor, Michael Tubbs (Feb. 13).
For more information, go to www.cityarts.net. Jesse Hamlin is a Bay Area journalist and former San Francisco Chronicle staff writer.