The singer Maria Marquez among special guests at Unusual Standards Concert with John Santos Sextet in SFJazz Center, San Francisco, CA, September 28 this

UNUSUAL STANDARDS

An unforgettable, outside the box concert of organic, sensual and funky Afro-Caribbean-tinged jazz and 

Latin American "standards" with more unusual turns and surprises than a roller coaster, 

as we deconstruct the standard and reconstruct the familiar. 

Featuring

THE JOHN SANTOS SEXTET

Melecio Magdaluyo * Dr. John Calloway * Saul Sierra

Marco Diaz * David Flores * John Santos

with extra special guests

Ed Reed
Calvin Keys
Maria Marquez
Terrie Odabi

Sunday, September 28th, 2014

7:00 PM

at the gorgeous new

SFJAZZ Center

201 Franklin at Fell St. 

San Francisco CA, 94102

http://www.sfjazz.org

Exquisite vocalist, composer, arranger, educator, producer Maria Marquez, gracefully poised between jazz and world music, has been credited for possessing gifts which echo those of Edith Piaf and Nina Simone. 

A recent review from her native country Venezuela claimed Maria's 2004 CD Nature's Princess (Princesa de la Naturaleza) a landmark in the recording history of that country. 

She began her musical career as a teenager singing in a duet with influential singer/songwriter Vytas Brenner in the late 60's and early 70's in Venezuela. 

Maria is a graduate of Berklee College of Music where she studied composition, arranging and film scoring for 5 years. While in Boston she performed with pianist Tomas San Miguel (Spain), cellist Jaques Morelembaum (Brazil), singer Mili Bermejo (Mexico) and percussionist Cyro Baptista (Brazil) among others. In 1982 she received her diploma in Professional Music from Berklee and headed to San Francisco.

Soon after arriving in the Bay Area, Maria started performing with guitarist Joyce Cooling. This inspiring collaboration would also broaden her horizon into the world of Jazz and Brazilian Music; it was also at this time that she started her long friendship and collaboration with percussionist John Santos, a friendship that would bring many great moments on stage as well as in the studio.  

Also in 1985 Maria formed another alliance that would show to be very productive with electronic music wizard, multi-instrumentalist and producer Frank Harris. With Frank she recorded two folk songs from Venezuela,Canto de Pilon and Campesina by Juan Vicente Torrealba. Together they co-arranged and co-produced these two memorable songs that would become part of the whirlpool of a new movement in the early 80's called "World Music". 

In 1986 Maria and Frank collaborated and produced the soundtrack for the movie Three x Three by Venezuelan cinematographer Calogero Salvo. 

In 1991 one of the greatest bassists in the Jazz world, composer and producer Charlie Haden took the arrangement of Canto de Pilon by Maria and Frank and adapted it to his acclaimed "Liberation Orchestra" for an album that would win a Grammy that same year - "Dream Keeper". 

During the period between 1992- 1995, Maria became involved in radio. She produced and hosted a weekly program for the "Emisora Cultural de Caracas", the first radio show of world music in Caracas, where audiences were exposed to ethnic and pop music from around the world. She was the musical programmer for Jazz 95.5 FM (Caracas) where she also produced and hosted her own radio show of world music and jazz. In 1995, Maria co- produced her first solo CD De uno y otro lado with some of the best Jazz musicians in Caracas.

In 1999 she produced and released the haunting Eleven Love Stories/Once Cuentos de Amor.

jazzcaribe@hotmail.com