Mark Turner Quartet

In a career that spans two decades and encompasses a broad array of musical ventures, saxophonist Mark Turner has emerged as a towering presence in the jazz community.  With a distinctive, personal tone, singular improvisational skills and an innovative, challenging compositional approach, he’s earned a far-reaching reputation as one of jazz’s most original and influential musical forces. Born in 1965 in Ohio and raised in Southern California, Turner grew up surrounded by music.  “There always was a lot of R&B, jazz, soul and gospel  playing in the house,” he recalls.  “This was in the early ’70s, when the whole integration and civil rights thing had begun to go mainstream, and my mother and stepfather were in the first wave of young black professionals and intellectuals who moved to upper-middle-class white neighborhoods.  They and their friends were always going out to see live jazz.  I was intrigued by that, and I was intrigued by the whole history of jazz music and African-American culture, as well as the music itself.  Turner,  firmly now  part of this jazz tradition/culture , has  not only released more than  a  dozen albums   as leader,  but he is quite a  prolific  as a sideman as well.  He has recorded and toured with musicians as  diverse as  Jakob Bro,  Tom Harrell, Billy Hart, Ed Simon, Enrico Rava, Kurt Rosenwinkel, David Virelles,   Ethan Iverson, Baptiste Trotignon and The SFJazz Collective.  In 2022, Turner released his  critically acclaimed “Return from the Stars” (titled after Stanislav Lem’s science fiction novel) which gave   his gives his quartet plenty of space in which to move, on an album both exhilarating and thoughtful in its arc of expression. Solos flow organically out of the arrangements and, beneath the often-dazzling interplay of Turner’s tenor and Jason Palmer’s trumpet, the rhythm section of Joe Martin (bass)  and Jonathan Pinson (drums) roams freely.  In late   2023 Turner released   re-visited this music in a riveting  live recording  from the Village Vanguard which received 5 stars from Downbeat magazine.  Turner will be playing  music from  his  latest and critically acclaimed  recording, “Live at the Village Vanguard” .