Goldstar Member Tips

• Goldstar Member on Where to Eat
  Arrive early band have dinner and drinks, this will allow you to choose your seats
• Goldstar Member on What to Wear
  Business Casual
• Goldstar Member on Where to Park
  Parking on the street is usually available if you look.

7 Goldstar Member Reviews

Goldstar Member

The band was hotttttttt. Nice selection on arrangements. The Thelonious Monk arrangement was nice (its hard to hit the keys as hard as Thelonious did).

Peter & Kenny Washington were fantastic as well as intuitive to the chord changes suggested by Benny via eye-contact.

Overall the band was tight and on hit, as well as a little improvisation thrown in for flavor. Benny was a little forgetful in naming the arrangements, but he didn't forget any notes:>)

Written on May 31 2010

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Goldstar Member

It was a great evening. Peter & Kenny Washington are no doubt the best rhytm section going and Benny was just great too.

Written on May 31 2010

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Ellen S.

Benny was fantastic and so was the rest of the trio.

Written on Jun 01 2010

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Goldstar Member

The performance was very enjoyable. The audience was much more knowledgeable than me about the music and the musicians were truly appreciated.
I have gone to Yoshi's many times including the original one. Unfortunately the number of people that they pack in now makes it quite uncomfortable. Sad to see.

Written on Jun 01 2010

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More Information About Benny Green Trio with Peter Washington and Kenny Washington

Website

http://www.yoshis.com/oakland/jazzclub/artist/show/1275

Description

Born in New York in 1963, Benny Green grew up in Berkeley, California, and began classical piano studies at the age of seven. Influenced by his father, a tenor saxophonist, his attention soon turned to jazz. Benny played in school bands before hooking up with singer Faye Carol: "That was good training for me in terms of accompaniment and learning about the blues, and she also gave me a chance to play trio, opening for her every night."

As a teenager he worked with Eddie Henderson, and got some big band experience with a 12-piece group led by Chuck Israels. After his graduation, Benny freelanced around the bay area for a year, and then moved to New York in the spring of 1982. Back in the Big Apple, he met veteran pianist Walter Bishop Jr.: "I began studying with him and he helped point me in the direction of developing my own sound, and he also encouraged me to check out and study the whole scope of Jazz piano history, so I could get a sense of how I was to fit in".

After a short stint with Bobby Watson, Green worked with Betty Carter between 1983 and 1987, the year he joined Art Blakey's band. He remained a Jazz Messenger through late 1989, at which point he began working with Freddie Hubbard's quintet. In 1993 Oscar Peterson chose Benny as the first recipient of the City of Toronto's Glen Gould International Protégé Prize in Music. That year, Green replaced Gene Harris in Ray Brown's Trio, working with the veteran bass player until 1997. From 1997 on, Benny resumed his freelance career, led his own trios, and concentrated on his solo piano performances.

His recording career, which includes over one hundred sessions, is very impressive: amongst many others, he has recorded as a sideman with: Betty Carter (including Grammy award winner Look What I Got), Art Blakey & the Jazz Messengers, Freddie Hubbard, Bobby Watson, Milt Jackson, Diana Krall, and he is particularly featured in Ray Brown's trio series of CD's for Telarc: Bass Face (1993), Don't get Sassy (1994), Some of My Best Friends … (1994), Seven Steps to Heaven (1995), Super Bass (1996) and Live at Sculler's (1996).

As a leader of his own groups, Benny's recording career began with two albums for the Dutch label Criss Cross: Prelude (1988) and In This Direction (1989). In 1990 Green started recording for Blue Note: Lineage (1990), Greens (1991), Testifiyin' (1992), That's Right! (1993), The Place To Be (1994), Kaleidoscope (1997) and These Are Soulful Days (1999). He has also recorded for Toshiba- Funky (1997) -and for Telarc with Oscar Peterson- Oscar & Benny (1997).
   

About the Ticket Supplier: Yoshi's Oakland

Yoshi's began in 1973 as a small, North Berkeley sushi bar owned by a trio of struggling students with plenty of dreams. Its founder and namesake, Yoshie Akiba, orphaned during World War II, came to the U.S. to study fine arts, dance and dance therapy. She opened Yoshi's Japanese Restaurant with her two best friends Kaz Kajimura, a journalist and carpenter, and Hiroyuki Hori, a painter and Japanese cook. The original North-Berkeley, 25-seat restaurant quickly became successful and by 1977 the three partners moved to a larger space on Claremont Avenue in Oakland and began introducing live music in their restaurant. Over the next 20 years, Yoshi's built itself into one of the world's most respected jazz venues and won a reputation as the Bay Area's premier location for people who were looking for great food and the best jazz. Yoshi's has hosted legendary jazz greats such as Betty Carter, Max Roach, Dizzy Gillespie, Joe Williams, Diana Krall, Branford Marsalis, McCoy Tyner, Harry Connick Jr. and Oscar Peterson among hundreds of others.

In 1997, Yoshi's was invited by the Port of Oakland to relocate to Jack London Square as part of a plan to revitalize the area. Together with Morimoto Architects, Yoshi's built an award-winning 330-seat jazz club with a state-of-the-art sound system and design. Occupying 17,000 square feet in the heart of Jack London Square, the club is in it's tenth year in that location which has become one of the East Bay's greatest destinations. The restaurant and lounge have a combined capacity of 220. In 1998 Peter Williams was hired as the club's artistic director. Under his leadership, the club has continued to present the finest in jazz music, as well as world music, blues, neo-soul, latin jazz and afro-cuban music. In fall of 2006, Kajimura decided that it was time to elevate the menu to the quality of the jazz by recruiting Executive Chef Shotaro 'Sho' Kamio, one of the Bay Area's top chefs to make the change. Chef Kamio (formerly of Ozumo) brought a whole new generation of modern Japanese cuisine to Yoshi's, which instantly put it on the map as a destination to dine in addition to the best place to hear great live music.