In terms of bragging rights over commencement presents, nobody goes to prime Belmont’s Nathan Tokunaga.
The Carlmont Excessive College senior, a precociously gifted clarinetist and saxophonist who performed his first skilled gig at age 14, had the nice fortune of coming below the wing of pianist and Microsoft engineer Charles Chen.
A mentor and pal given to extravagant enthusiasm, Chen is pouring his assets into Tokunaga’s June 15 senior recital at San Jose State College’s Live performance Corridor, a night of orchestral jazz that includes a 50-piece ensemble with strings, brass, woodwinds and percussion.
“I’m going broke with this,” Chen mentioned. “There are no grants or anything, but we’re going to record the whole program after the recital.”
Dubbed “All the Strings You Are,” the night is shaping up as a live performance for the ages. All ages. The multi-generational ensemble consists of a couple of dozen of Tokunaga’s bandmates from the Peninsula Youth Orchestra and Carlmont Excessive orchestra.
However Chen has additionally employed native professionals and he’s flying in musicians from New York Metropolis and L.A., together with saxophonist Bob Sheppard, a founding member of Chick Corea’s Origin Sextet and a veteran studio musician with a whole bunch of albums, movie scores, and tv soundtracks to his credit score.
The Fremont jazz pianist has each motive to be focusing his time and checking account on his personal musical profession. Cellar Music Group simply launched his second recording, “Building Characters,” an formidable idea album that includes Chen’s authentic compositions and a solid of heavyweight gamers like Sheppard and trumpet nice Randy Brecker.
Within the coming months he’s enjoying a string of gigs celebrating the brand new album together with his Bay Space sextet, beginning Might 24 at Mr. Tipple’s in San Francisco. The identical combo hits Piedmont Piano Firm in Oakland July 13, Mr. Tipple’s once more July 18, and Oakland’s Sound Room August 21.
However as if he simply can’t assist himself, he’s plunged into “All the Strings You Are.” Learning movie scoring and classical orchestration helped put together Chen for the problem of writing the charts. He’s organized about two dozen requirements from the Nineteen Thirties and ‘40s, items styled after Golden Age Hollywood composers and classic Swing-era bands just like the Claude Thornhill Orchestra.
“It’s the biggest senior recital in the history of anything,” Chen mentioned, sounding a bit of awed by the scope of the challenge. “I started studying to write music for film and classical orchestration. A lot of that skillset will be used in this jazz/classical fusion. As a kid I wanted to play classical music, so I’m combining all the worlds that I love.”
Born in Taipei, Chen grew up in Cupertino and began piano classes in first grade with a pal’s mom who gave the immigrant household a reduced fee. He’d develop up listening to his grandmother’s Ella Fitzgerald and Wes Montgomery albums, however he didn’t begin learning jazz till he was at Monta Vista Excessive College.
He remembers minimal instruction, with the youngsters principally determining the music on their very own, however after two years his combo landed a gig in downtown Sunnyvale at Scruffy Murphey’s. He’d just lately watched a Herbie Hancock video “and I picked up the keyboard and played like a Keytar,” he recalled. “I’ve always been a crowd pleaser and class clown. That hasn’t changed.”
The summer time of his senior yr he made a significant leap as a participant attending the Stanford Jazz Workshop below the tutelage of piano nice Taylor Eigsti. Chen continued to play jazz by his undergrad research at UC Berkeley whereas majoring in math and pc science. His life has proceeded alongside twin profession paths ever since, although they intersected throughout his Google years 2011-15 when he performed in Magpie, an all-Googler ensemble led by percussionist Mark Goldstein.
In his personal music he’s honed a hard-swinging post-bop method he documented on his 2022 debut album “Charles, Play!” Produced by South Bay tenor saxophonist Tim Lin, the spectacular quartet session captures Chen confidently holding his personal with the superlative New York rhythm part tandem of drummer Kenny Washington and bassist Peter Washington.
On the identical time, Chen was turning into the pianist of selection for South Bay swing dances and conventional jazz reveals, which meant he was cultivating a century of various jazz idioms, every with a definite rhythmic really feel.
Multi-instrumentalist Clint Baker, a guiding power on the trad jazz scene for many years, first performed with Chen at a mutual pal’s marriage ceremony “and I started hiring him for gigs, initially because I thought he was an excellent Teddy Wilson-style pianist,” Baker mentioned, referring to the supremely suave accompanist revered for his work with Billie Vacation and Benny Goodman.
Deeply impressed by Chen’s facility and curiosity in studying earlier jazz types, Baker describes the pianist as “one of the smartest and fastest-learning musicians I’ve ever worked with.” It was Baker who launched Chen to Tokunaga, and the pianist appears to have discovered a kindred spirit.
“Charles is really a kind of mad genius,” Tokunaga mentioned. “He has these grand ideas and really pulls them together. I’m so excited. It’s not every day you get to play with a 50-piece orchestra and full big band.”
Contact Andrew Gilbert at jazzscribe@aol.com.
CHARLES CHEN
With the Charles Chen Sextet: 6 and seven:30 p.m. Might 24 and July 18 at Mr. Tipple’s, San Francisco; $15-$30; mrtipplessf.com; 5 p.m. July 13 at Piedmont Piano Firm, Oakland; $25-$30; piedmontpiano.com; 7:30 p.m. Aug. 21 on the Sound Room, Oakland; $30; www.soundroom.org.
Presents “All the Strings You Are”: That includes Nathan Tokunaga, Charles Chen and orchestra; 7 p.m. June 15 on the San José State College Live performance Corridor; $30; charlesperforms.com
