Presenting: Charlie Gabriel & Friends On Monday, June 26

Join us on Monday, June 26, 2017 as we present Charlie Gabriel & Friends.

Clarinetist, saxophonist, and flutist Charlie Gabriel is a fourth-generation jazz musician from New Orleans. Raised in a classically trained musical family that emigrated from Santo Domingo in the 1850s, Gabriel began playing clarinet professionally with the Eureka Jazz Band when he was eleven years old. During World War II, his father, clarinetist and drummer Martin Manuel “Manny” Gabriel often sent his son as a substitute on gigs. Charlie recalls how the musicians with whom he played —T-Boy Remy, Kid Humphrey, Kid Sheik, Kid Shots, Kid Clayton, and Kid Howard— also raised him and brought him home after the gigs.

Mr. Gabriel, a Preservation Hall Foundation Legacy Program participant and long time member of the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, presents three very special shows as part of the Foundation's Outreach Program featuring three of his star pupils from Detroit, plus fellow Preservation Hall Jazz Band trumpeter Branden Lewis. Making their debut at Preservation Hall will be: Taslimah Bey on piano, Djallo Djakate on percussion, and Marion Hayden on bass.

For more information on our Foundation and its various programs, please check out www.preshallfoundation.org. 

Taslimah P. Bey

Taslimah P. Bey began studying classical music at age 16, and switched to jazz in her senior year of high school. Taslimah started researching ragtime music and the roots of jazz in college. When she heard Charlie Gabriel, the music she had read about came alive for her. She formed Taslimah’s Ragtime Band, featuring the compositions of early ragtime composers, including Scott Joplin, Jelly Roll Morton, Tom Turpin, Artie Matthews, Harry P. Guy and James P. Johnson. For her efforts in performing the music and lecturing on the lives of these highly talented 20th century American composers, Taslimah received an award for the Preservation of African-American Music from the Society for the Culturally Concerned in Detroit. The founding members of the band included a jazz greats Marcus Belgrave, Charlie Gabriel, Marion Hayden and Djallo Djakate, Dwight Adams, Tony Holland, Raycee Biggs and James Carter. Taslimah is a regular performer at Jazz and Ragtime Festivals across the country, including the Scott Joplin Festival in Sedalia, Missouri, Greenfield Village’s Ragtime Street Fair, and the West Coast Ragtime Society’s festival in Sacramento. She has performed with the Preservation Hall Jazz Band in New Orleans, and at the Blue Note Jazz Café in New York City. In addition to performing ragtime, Taslimah teaches music at Spain Middle School in Detroit. She has been featured in Metro Times newspaper, and as the cover article for the Oakland University magazine.

Djallo Djakate

Born in Detroit, drummer/percussionist Djallo Keita Djakate is one of the most dynamic and sought after sidemen in the Detroit scene. His style ranges from traditional jazz, through avant garde, funk and African drumming. Known as the “hardest working drummer in Detroit,” Djallo Djakate, a Detroit native, has been inspired by music since childhood. He is proficient in many different rhythm styles, including ragtime, be-bop, swing, blues, gospel, rhythm & blues, soul, funk, rock, fusion, reggae, avant-garde, Afro-Cuban, Brazilian, West African, New Orleans, and techno. A well-respected private teacher, Djakate has always challenged himself and his students to learn. His solid grasp of multiple rhythm styles has led him to work with leaders of several different genres in music, including Harold McKinney, Marcus Belgrave, Charlie Gabriel, Wendell Harrison, Kenny Cox, Faruq Z. Bey, Omawale African Dancers, Sun Drummers, Craig Taborn, Bob Hurst, and the Black Bottom Collective. He has toured the U.S. and Europe in performance with such diverse artists as Martha Reeves, Spencer Barefield, Taslimah Bey, Charles Gabriel and Straight Ahead.

Marion Hayden

Marion Hayden is one of the nation's finest proponents of the acoustic bass. She creates a rich, dark tone and a very advanced rhythmic concept. Classically trained, she honed her skills in private studies at the prestigious University of Michigan and Michigan State University. An accomplished composer and educator, Hayden teaches at the University of Michigan. As well as leading her own jazz combo, Straight Ahead, she has performed or recorded with such luminaries as Marcus Belgrave, Roy Brooks, Kirk Lightsey, Ralph Peterson and James Carter.

The late Nan Bostick described her experience hearing the band as follows: "They inspired cake-walkers, conga line dancing, and a tap dancer (who came in off the street) with their exhilarating arrangements of Harry P. Guy's Cleaning Up in Georgia, Walkin' and Talkin' and Heebie Jeebie Blues not to mention some really wonderful Jelly Roll Morton and Scott Joplin pieces...It cooked!!"