SATURDAY, MAY 18, 2024 • 6 PM & 8:30 PM

CHARLES & FRIENDS featuring

JOHN BEASLEY AND THE NEXT GENERATION

Our inaugural Jazz @ The JAI Guest Curator, legendary award-winning saxophonist Charles McPherson, and John Beasley, two-time GRAMMY winner, pianist, and composer, curate a program from Duke Ellington through the eras of jazz up to what’s happening now. John Beasley is joined by a roster of rising star jazz artists.

John Beasley is a versatile pianist, composer, arranger who began his career in his 20s backing jazz icons Miles Davis and Freddie Hubbard. Since then, Beasley has performed with a wide range of artists, including Dianne Reeves, Christian McBride, John Patitucci, Chaka Khan, and Carly Simon, to name a few. He was music director for international tours with Steely Dan, AR Rahman (Slumdog Millionaire) and Queen Latifah and co-MD for Chucho Valdés La Creation tour.

As a recording artist, Beasley has over a dozen albums and has earned 11 GRAMMY nominations. Beasley’s solo project, MONK’estra, is a trilogy of albums which has earned six consecutive GRAMMY nominations and a win.

When UNESCO declared April 30 as International Jazz Day in 2011, John Beasley was appointed Music Director for its annual global gala concerts, which are hosted by the Herbie Hancock Jazz Institute. Since 2012, Beasley helmed concerts in Paris, Istanbul, Osaka, St Petersburg, Havana, Washington, DC, Melbourne, New Orleans, New York, Los Angeles, and online, which PBS TV have broadcast. The 2016 Jazz at the White House gala hosted by President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama earned Beasley an Emmy nomination for Best Musical Direction (ABC TV).

Beasley’s work as a composer-arranger-pianist extends beyond jazz with many credits in TV and film, particularly with 15-time Oscar-nominee film composer Thomas Newman in Elemental (Pixar, 2023) and blockbusters 1917, James Bond’s Spectre and Skyfall, Finding Dory, He Named Me Malala, and The Shawshank Redemption. Newman invited John to orchestrate and conduct his big band MONK’estra in Steven Soderbergh’s Let Them All Talk with Meryl Streep. Beasley started composing for TV at the age of 24 working for Paramount, Disney, and other studios on Star Trek: The Next Generation, Cheers, and Fame, to name a few. He was handpicked to be Music Director for TV specials and singing competitions, including Sports Illustrated 50 Years of Beautiful, Duets with John Legend, Sing Your Face Off, and The Search for the Next Pussycat Doll. In American Idol’s fourth season, Beasley was Associate MD, ushering Carrie Underwood to victory. He then spent a decade working as Lead Arranger for American Idol and The Tonight Show with Rickey Minor as MD.

Over the recent five years, Beasley’s output has been prodigious whether writing, recording or performing with his MONK’estra big band/septet/quartet; managing steady projects with European big bands; and venturing into symphonic jazz after winning JAM Music Lab’s international composition competition with his “Simplexity” piece performed by the renowned Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra. Beasley can be found touring world stages with Dianne Reeves, his jazz-fusion “El Trio” band with Horacio “El Negro” Hernandez and Jose Gola, or writing and producing albums for various artists.

John Beasley, piano
Giveton Gelin, trumpet
Erena Terakubo, alto saxophone
Russell Hall, bass
Anthony Fung, drums