Mr. Tambourine Stan

Jamey Haddad gets jazzy with his Quartet at The Mad Monkfish on Sunday, 11 August 2024.

Special mystery guests on vocals and tambourine.

The booker behind the local live music series Illegally Blind (puts together the Fuzzstival and more), Jason Trefts, is raising money to start a non-profit organization, staffed by brain tumor survivors, “that will provide free short-term care coordination services for people in the Boston, MA area recently diagnosed with a brain tumor.”

The mission of the project hits close to home for Trefts. In his own words, “I was diagnosed with an incurable Astrocytoma at 24 years old. I have spent the decade-plus since navigating chronic disabling conditions while working in the human services field.”

“Astrocytoma” is a type of brain tumor. And while Trefts has been dealing with that, he has also been working in care coordination himself, observing first hand how important the work is. His proposed non-profit would make more of that important work happen for more people. Find out the details and donate at the Still Around Gofundme.

Just an aside, I saw a poster for a Still Around benefit show at Arts at the Armory back in May, didn’t mind what the benefit was benefiting, and just figured it was a jokey reference to the fact that all the college kids had gone home for the summer making all the locals part of the “Still Around” club. Because I’m an idiot. Obviously the phrase means a whole lot more.

Jamey Haddad Quartet

Unpictured: Jamey Haddad

The Jazz Baroness Room at The Mad Monkfish is not a “church” nor a “library” as the emcee always reminds you in the pre-show remarks. In other words, they expect that you’ll do a little side chattering, but don’t dial up your brilliant verbal ejaculations too loud because there are performers on the stage.

How does the crowd respond? Differently on different nights. It was about the average level of white noise on Sunday night as the Jamey Haddad Quartet put on a show. $25 at the door; contrast with the usual free entry (though you better reserve ahead of time) for your average jazz residency at the venue. Which means that the people who were there were more or less fired up for Jamey Haddad.

As well they should be. The jazz and world percussionist Jamey Haddad has one of those CVs that unspool longer than your lower intestine, and maybe the trans-Atlantic cable. He’s played with everyone, everywhere. You can read the laundry list of collaborations at his website – lately he’s been highlighting his collab work with Arooj Aftab, who “the kids might know” (she’s playing Brighton Music Hall on 9/19), in case names like Osvaldo Golijov, Yo-Yo Ma, Sting, Dawn Upshaw, Joe Lovano, Elliot Goldenthal, Brazil’s Assad Brothers , Simon Shaheen, the Paul Winter Consort, Nancy Wilson, Dave Liebman, Esperanza Spalding, Trichy Sankaran, vocalist Betty Buckley, Steve Shehan, Leo Blanco, and Nguyen Lee don’t ring a bell.

Hey, I know Sting!

Was the crowd fired up enough to quiet down? Not enough for me to catch the names of some superb guest performers. One male vocalist sat at the bar until it was his time to do a cameo, flashing a kind of classical-Indian-raga-vocals meets jazz stylings. The second guest performer was all about the tambourine, and he performed a tambourine duet with Jamey Haddad, who emerged from behind his drum kit to shake that moneymaker. You never heard a pair of tambourines played like this before, like they were the star of the show – because, for a moment, they were.

Mystery guests aside, I can pass along the names of the superlative quartet. Along with Haddad on drums was Alain Mallet (piano), Edmar Colon (saxophone), and Ian Ashby (bass). Tip of the cap to Berklee College of Music, to which all three were connected, either as teachers or students.

Mystery vocalist

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