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Gualala Arts
Promoting public interest and participation in the arts since 1961.
Archive of past events: 2004 through 2014
The Top of the Cliff restaurant, upstairs in the Seacliff Center, offers customers a lovely view of the Gualala River, Gualala Point and the ocean bay where gray whales swim by the picture windows. Top of the Cliff participated in the Redwood Coast Whale & Jazz Festival in 2005, & 2010, and offers live music in the ocean view restaurant upon occasion.
Owner Laurie Bucci will be your host for an evening of fine dining and exciting jazz with Ara Anderson (trumpet) and Adrian Jost (bandoneón & bayan) teaming up as Ara & Adrian Potpourri. Chef Shirley Ranieri is preparing a special Easter Menu with other à la carte and bar menu selections available. No cover charge; seating is limited so dining reservations are recommended. (707-884-1539) Jazz Artists
Ara Anderson, trumpet
Moving on to higher education, Anderson studied classical pedagogy and performance at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, has led the Bay Area's brass octet Boostamonte, and has been a member of the West Coast version of Transmission, a band founded in Ann Arbor, MI, by bandmates Colin Stetson and Stuart Bogie. His most prominent group as musical director is Iron & the Albatross, with vocalist Katy Stephan, drummer Ches Smith, and bassist Todd Sickafoose, playing what has been described as junky circus-chamber music.
As a sideman, Anderson has been a prominent member of the backup band of Tom Waits with Stetson and has accompanied Dan Hicks & His Hot Licks and many other prominent musicians. He performed in the 2009 Whale & Jazz Festival with
Todd Sickafoose's Tiny Resistors.
In addition to the trumpet and cornet, he plays tuba, baritone horn, glockenspiel, celeste, toy piano, pump organ, and various percussion instruments.
Adrian Jost, bandoneón & bayan
The high-tech industry brought Adrian to the Silicon Valley where he co-founded Trio Garufa, a popular San Francisco based tango group that plays for dancers and concerts throughout the bay area as well as at various Tango festivals, including in Argentina. He is often in Buenos Aires to dance, play, repair his bandoneón or study with the great masters of Tango. His discography includes Tango en el Mate and La Segunda Tradición by Trio Garufa, and the just released album Revirado of Tango Pacifico, a five-piece tango group based in Portland, Oregon, specializing in the music of Astor Piazzolla. |
Anderson was born in 1974 and raised in his native San Francisco, CA. His father, a trombonist, earned a degree in jazz composition from the Berklee College of Music in the early '70s. His mother, a Syrian-born Armenian whose family had moved to Massachusetts, was working in the Berklee library when they met. Anderson began singing and playing trumpet, violin, drums, and piano in fifth grade, with encouragement from his father. Throughout his school years he played in several orchestras, concert and jazz bands, and in church services on handbells or with vocal choirs. In extracurricular musical activities, he joined an after-school jazz ensemble led by the renowned jazz bassist Herbie Lewis.
Jost studied music as a young boy in the French Riviera and his native country, Switzerland. He won the gold medal of the Association of Accordionists at the age of 11, which led him to study the bayan with composer Fritz Tschannen, Switzerland's "teacher of teachers," and later with world-class performer Stephane Chapuis. He received a BS degree in Yverdon, won the 1996 Landis & Gyr contest, and came to Chicago where he discovered Tango while pursuing a Master's in science and music technology at Northwestern University.