Jazz Mafia with Tiffany Austin – Oakland, CA

Continuing Jazz Mafia’s much talked about monthly residency at The Sound Room, this special night brings together Jazz Mafia and Tiffany Austin in a celebration of their decade-long collaboration. The 7-piece band of core Jazz Mafia musicians will perform original songs co-written by Tiffany and Jazz Mafia director Adam Theis, along with Adam’s arrangements showcasing Tiffany’s remarkable vocal talents. The evening will also feature a tribute to jazz legend Art Blakey in honor of his birthday.

Tiffany Austin – vocals

Adam Theis – trombone, musical director

Mike Olmos – trumpet

Tommy Occhiuto – sax

Colin Hogan – keys

Joshua Thurston-Milgrom – upright bass

Henry Plumb – drums

In the year 2000, trombonist, bassist, composer, arranger, and producer Adam Theis co-founded Jazz Mafia – an eclectic artist collective of forward-thinking and accomplished players in Electro, Hip-Hop, World, Classical, and Jazz. Twenty years in the making, Jazz Mafia is a prolific staple of the quintessential San Francisco sound, uniting creative and accomplished Bay Area instrumentalists, vocalists, MCs, composers, and arrangers.

The collective quickly garnered a reputation for its collaborative and risk-taking spirit, and over the years has worked with Roy Ayers, Lyrics Born, Zion-I, Rebelution, Latyrx, Galactic, Ledesi, Blackalicious, and Jackie Greene, to name a few. Recently, the collective performed sold out residencies at the SFJAZZ Center and served as the house band in The Soiled Dove – its large-scale cirque-inspired collaboration with The Vau de Vire Society. Jazz Mafia has also recently collaborated with the Oakland Symphony at Paramount Theatre of the Arts, as well as with GRAMMY-winning composer Mason Bates and his Mercury Soul project at the Kennedy Center in DC. Jazz Mafia also curates musical experiences for Stanford University, Oakland Art & Soul Festival, and many other presenters.

This event features Vocalist Tiffany Austin. Austin’s music and voice draw upon influences such as Sarah Vaughan, Ella Fitzgerald, Nina Simone, and Aretha Franklin, yet she also infuses songs with her own signature style that is precise, intelligent, and soulful.

Austin is becoming a national figure in her own right: an artist with a musical message as topical as an unsettling headline and as timeless as an Ella Fitzgerald ballad. Andy Gilbert