Ehud Asherie
– Contributed photo
HART — The Hart Community Performing Arts Series will present the Ehud Asherie Swing Quartet in concert Friday, April 11, at 7:30 p.m. in the Hart Public Schools Auditorium.
Tickets are available at the door or at hartseries.org.
Largely self-taught, or rather, “old-schooled,” Asherie learned the ropes at Smalls, spending much of his early teens becoming a fixture of the late-night jam sessions held at this now legendary Greenwich Village club in New York City. Mentored by the late Frank Hewitt, Asherie began to develop “his virtuosity and his ear for clean, crisp lines” (The Star-Ledger). Later, an admiration for earlier piano styles took hold; soon enough Asherie had absorbed them into his playing becoming, in the words of The New Yorker, “A master of swing and stride.”
His present style combines this broad tradition, merging idioms into a distinctly personalized approach. Among numerous albums recorded as sideman, acclaimed album releases under Ehud Asherie’s leadership have included Shuffle Along which reinterpreted the music of Eubie Blake, Organic, which finds Asherie on organ, and Upper West Side and Lower East Side, duet projects featuring the saxophonist Harry Allen and his trio recording Music Makes Me. Asherie’s most recent trio recording is Wild Man Blues on the Capri Label.
Ehud has worked with a broad range of musicians including Cécile McLorin Salvant, Wycliffe Gordon, Catherine Russell, John Pizzarelli, and Charles McPherson, and has performed at clubs and festivals in South America, Europe, Asia, and throughout the U.S. His playing can be heard on numerous celebrated recordings, including the 2010 Grammy Award winning soundtrack of HBO’s Boardwalk Empire.
Saxophonist Harry Allen was inducted into the Rhode Island Music Hall of Fame in 2024 and into the Jazz Monsters Hall of Fame at SOKA University of America in 2020. He was a top-three finalist for France’s Acadamie du Jazz’s Prix du Jazz Classique for his CD, “Under a Blanket of Blue,” with guitarist Dave Blenkhorn. Not only was this CD recorded remotely during the pandemic, but also mixed and mastered by Harry. He has recorded over 70 CDs as a leader and many more as a sideman. Harry has performed at jazz festivals and clubs worldwide, frequently touring the United States, Europe and Asia. He has performed with Rosemary Clooney, Jay Geils, Ray Brown, Hank Jones, Frank Wess, Flip Phillips, Scott Hamilton, Harry ‘Sweets’ Edison, Kenny Burrell, Herb Ellis, John Pizzarelli, Bucky Pizzarelli, Gus Johnson, Jeff Hamilton, Terry Gibbs, Warren Vache, and has recorded with Tony Bennett, Johnny Mandel, Ray Brown, Tommy Flanagan, James Taylor, Sheryl Crow, Kenny Barron, Dave McKenna, Dori Caymmi, Larry Goldings, George Mraz, Jake Hanna, and Al Foster, among others.
Since moving from Detroit to New York City in 1989, trumpeter Jon-Erik Kellso’s varied career as a performer, recording artist and educator has been distinguished by his deep knowledge of his instrument’s voice throughout American popular music. A wide array of musical stylists – including Catherine Russell, Rachael and Vilray, and Wynton Marsalis — all find, in Jon-Erik, a masterful player who deftly elevates the trumpet’s traditional vocabulary into something contemporary and personal. This is also evidenced in his educational videos for jazz at Lincoln Center’s Jazz Academy and, when not touring, regular performances with his group, The EarRegulars (at the historic Ear Inn Sundays since 2007), tenure as the featured trumpet soloist with Vince Giordano’s Nighthawks (every Monday at Birdland starting in May 2023), and performances at important NYC venues, including Dizzy’s, Smalls, Mezzrow and Cafe Ornithology. His sound is recognizable in television and movie soundtracks, such as “Ghost World,” “The Aviator,” “Bessie,” “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,” “Killers of the Flower Moon,” and “Boardwalk Empire,” for which the Nighthawks won a Grammy, as well as over 100 recordings, including his most recent Arbors album, “Live at the Ear Inn.”
Drummer Phil Stewart has been a staple on the New York jazz scene for almost two decades. Studying with such master drummers as Vernel Fornier, Jimmy Cobb, Joe Morello, Joe Farnsworth and Sam Ulano Phil has learned the art of jazz drumming from its creators. As a member of his brother Grant Stewart’s quartet, Phil has performed all over the world including Japan, France, Germany, Holland and Uruguay. As a sideman, Phil has had the pleasure of performing with some of the world’s leading jazz musicians including Brad Mehldau , Peter Bernstein, Harold Maybern, Harry Allen, Hank Jones, Bill Charlap, Peter Washington, Barry Harris and Johnny O’Neal. He has performed in all the major jazz venues in NYC including The Blue Note, The Jazz Standard, The Iridium and Birdland. Phil honed his skills playing in west village jazz institutions Smalls and Fat Cat.
For more information about the Hart Community Performing Arts Series, visit hartseries.org.
______________________________
Please Support Local News
Receive daily MCP and OCP news briefings along with email news alerts for $10 a month. Your contribution will help us to continue to provide you with free local news.
Payment can be made monthly via credit card, bank account, PayPal or Venmo through recurring email invoicing. These payments can be set up for autopay each month.
To sign up, email editor@mediagroup31.com. In the subject line write: Subscription. Please supply your name, email address, mailing address, and phone number (indicate cell phone). We will not share your information with any outside sources. For more than one email address in a household, the cost is $15 per month per email address.
Alternative methods:
- We can send you an invoice for a yearly payment of $120, which you can conveniently pay online or by check. If you are interested in this method, please email editor@mediagroup31.com and we can sign you up. You can also mail a yearly check for $120 to Media Group 31, PO Box 21, Scottville, MI 49454 (please include your email address).
Payment must be made in advance prior to subscription activation.
We appreciate all our readers regardless of whether they choose to continue to access our service for free or with a monthly financial support.
_____
This story and original photography are copyrighted © 2025, all rights reserved by Media Group 31, LLC, PO Box 21, Scottville, MI 49454. No portion of this story or images may be reproduced in any way, including print or broadcast, without expressed written consent.
As the services of Media Group 31, LLC are news services, the information posted within the sites are archivable for public record and historical posterity. For this reason it is the policy and practice of this company to not delete postings. It is the editor’s discretion to update or edit a story when/if new information becomes available. This may be done by editing the posted story or posting a new “follow-up” story. Media Group 31, LLC or any of its agents have the right to make any changes to this policy. Refer to Use Policy for more information.
.jpg)