Online Press Kit
Press
Release
-
Yoshi's
San
Francisco
June
30
2009
concert
EPK (Electronic Press
Kit) bio
profile
by KCSM-FM announcer Michael Burman musical
styles and influences reviews photo mp3s Kurt Ribak Trio Myspace
site
Thursday,
September 2, 7 PM to 10:00 PM
Lorna K -
jazz vocals
Croll's New Zealander
http://www.the-newzealander.com/
1400 Webster Street
Alameda CA
510-769-8555

Lorna K has been playing The New Zealander in Alameda. It is on
the site of Croll's, which has been a bar / restaurant in one form or
another probably since it opened. The New Zealander closed a few
months ago and re-opened under new management but with the same
chef. They feature New Zealand food.
The lineup will be Duncan James, Rob Hart on drums, and me on bass.
The building dates back to 1879 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Croll_Building
and is very much as it must have been a century or more ago.
Wed., September 14 - 8:00 PM
PickPocket
Ensemble -
Folk music from an imaginary country
http://www.pickpocketensemble.com/
Strings
San Pablo Ave.
Oakland, CA
This group also features Marguerite
Ostrovsksy on violin, Yates Brown on guitar and banjo and Michaelle
Goerlitz on
percussion. Strings is a funny little below-the-radar kind of
place. I hope to have more details later.
Wednesday,
September 22,
6:00 to 9:00 PM - and the FOURTH Wednesday of
every month
Kurt Ribak Trio - Original jazz
Cato's Ale
House
http://www.mrcato.com/
3891 Piedmont Ave., Oakland, CA
510-655-3349
all ages, no cover


East
Bay
Express
Review:
There was a review of the CD in the "Local
Licks" column of the East Bay Express.
NEW CD project by Sheilani Alix
If you've seen us playing in the last few years you've almost certainly
seen vocalist Sheilani Alix with us at some point. Sheilani sang
"People Get Ready" at our Yoshi's SF date last June 30, and she made
quite an impression.
Sheilani is recording her debut CD, and the backing musicians
are all ones that regularly appear in the Kurt Ribak Trio and Kurt
Ribak Quartet. Matt Willis will be featured on drums, Greg
Sankovich on keyboards, Lincoln Adler on saxes, and Kurt on bass.
Guitarist Tim Fox will also appear on some tracks. This should be
good - Sheilani is recording at the legendary Fantasy Records in
Berkeley.
CD sales in
Japan
Disk Union licensed the track "Prima," from the "more" CD
by the Kurt Ribak Trio. We are included in the "Jazz
Bar
2008" recording, a compilation of recent jazz recordings.
The
track "Pseudoafrocubanismo"
from
our
debut
CD
("Kurt
Ribak Trio" - three fingers cover) was
included in "Jazz Bar 2007," which has been selling well
in Japan.
Our newest CD, "gone"
has
been
selling
especially
well
in
Japan.
Kurt Ribak Trio played Yoshi's San
Francisco June 30, 2009 - and Yoshi's Oakland
Monday, July 19, 2010
Thanks to everybody who came out
to the show. There was a great turnout - Yoshi's was very
impressed with the ticket sales, and you were all a wonderful
audience. We were touched, grateful, and humbled by the
turnout. Thank you very much.
These nights were among the high points in my life.
"One
of
the
perks
of
being
an
unemployed
musician
is
that
you
get
to
play
much
less
bad
music."
-
Jack
Daney
Hire us!
Kurt
Ribak, individually, and
the Kurt Ribak Trio
collectively are available for other gigs. Leads for other gigs for the
trio or for
me as a sideman will be most welcome. Feel free to call or e-mail.
Quotes about Kurt - > "Hugging Kurt is a like a big bear with no hair" - Monica, age 5, to her father
Kurt as a sideman - aka - Other People's Music
Sheilani
Alix
Sheilani Alix often appears with us, and
she often hires me and Greg Sankovich to back her. She does a
killer version of the Curtis Mayfield song "People
Get
Ready." Sheila will be recording her debut CD in a month or so
- stay tuned for this - it should be really good. Expect to hear Greg
Sankovich, Lincoln Adler, Matt Wills, and Tim Fox on this project.
You can see Sheila performing the song with us at The Riptide in this
video.
Here are some CDs I played on -
Lorna
K
I have played with Lorna K for
well over
a decade. She has a new CD out entitled "Lorna K and the Dunes."
The
recording features her take on songs by Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys
as
well as some radical reinterpretations of songs including Duke
Ellington's
"What Am I Here For."
Lorna appeared at The Plush Room in the York Hotel in San Francisco December 2007 in one of its final events. She sold out the room! The instrumentalists on the recording and on the Plush Room date were Greg Sankovich on piano and Hammond Organ, Kurt Ribak on upright bass, Tom Griesser on clarinet and saxophone, and Bryan Bowman on drums.
Alex Walsh's CD "Light Another Candle"is pop - a lot of it sounds like Mott the Hoople meets the Replacements to me. This was recorded in 2003. I play electric bass and upright on it.
Brian Schindele's CD The Moral is original straightahead jazz. I like it - the title tune kicks off the CD with some great drumming. This CD features Brian, drummer Tim Vaughan, Sheldon Brown on tenor sax, Tom Griesser playing sax on one track, Dave Scott on trumpet, cornet, and flugelhorn, Larry Leight on trombone, and Connie Champagne as featured guest vocalist on a ballad track.
I regularly played with Stephen Bigger at Moraga Valley Presbyterian Church, where he was music director. "Lights on the Horizon" is a CD of his contemporary Christian songwriting. Stephen sings lead on a number of the tunes, but he also features Amy Beth Nickelson and Katie O'Gorman, two very talented young members of the congregation at Moraga Valley.
You can download the Kurt Ribak Trio recordings at iTunes and emusic.com, as well as elsewhere. We've been getting some attention at emusic - the recording is rated four out of five stars. You can do a trial membership for cheap, and recordings are way cheaper to download at emusic than with iTunes. The new recording is available for sale at iTunes, emusic, and elsewhere.Live
downloads
You can go to BayTaper.com
or http://mefeedia.com/feeds/21779/
to download our July 2, 2006 show at the Fillmore Jazz Festival. There
are also some excellent photos there. The show is rated five stars out
of five.
Myspace site
You can also go to our Myspace
page. The one for the Kurt
Ribak
Trio has songs up on the site and gig listings. There
is also a Kurt Ribak Myspace site that is specifically for
Kurt and includes his personal blog. Add us to your friend list!
T-shirts
We have a few Kurt Ribak Trio t-shirts remaining. These are a
seven-color print on Hanes Beefy-T shirts, so these are a quality
product. These echo the artwork of the first CD. They are black, with
the three-colored hand on the front and the words "Kurt Ribak Trio" on
the back. They come in
women's sizes and cut from small to L and men's from small to medium.
e-mail me at: kurt@ribak.com if
you
would like to buy a shirt, or catch up with me at a gig. Check them
out here. Drummer Tim Solook and his wife Lisa are modeling them
at our Fillmore Jazz Festival gig.
Bay Area Jazz Resources
Groove
Yard Record
Store and Newsletter
- Rick Ballard operates the Groove
Yard at 5555 Claremont in Oakland. It's between the Rockridge and
Temescal districts. It's a great jazz record store for used vinyl and
new and used CDs by local as well as national and international
artists. Rick has an
e-mail newsletter. E-mail him at groove2@earthlink.net and
request to be added and be up on the concerts, CDs, etc.
KCSM -
FM Radio and Jazz
Datebook
You can always check out who's playing in the Bay Area with KCSM-FM's Jazz
Datebook.
You can listen to KCSM-FM at 91.1 FM. They are 24 hours jazz, no commercials. They are a huge contributor to the vitality of the Bay Area jazz scene. You can listen online at http://www.kcsm.org/jazz91/listen.php
>We're like, all up in literature and stuff
Mark Coggins is the author of the August Riordan series of mystery novels. The August Riordan character is a wise-cracking tough guy PI who is also a jazz bassist.
I got to know Coggins a while ago and he asked if he could use some of my music for a KQED podcast of "Candy from Strangers", the third book in the August Riordan series. William P. Arney of the Noir City Film Festival reads the first chapter with my music accompanying the story - specifically, "Prelude to a B Movie" and "Pseudoafrocubanismo," which appeared on the Kurt Ribak Trio debut CD.
The podcast is permanently at the following location: http://www.kqed.org/arts/writersblock/episode.jsp?id=13480
iTunes users can access The Writers' Block via the following URL: http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=82023860
Pulp
Fiction
Also check out
the Word for
Word Theater
Company performance of "Angel Face". This is a stage setting of a Cornell
Woolrich story that originally appeared in the classic pulp magazine
Black Mask. Black Mask featured many of the best noir writers
including Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler.
The Writers' Block is also distributed through NPR here: http://www.npr.org/rss/podcast/podcast_detail.php?siteId=5593982
To go
directly to the audio, use
either of
these:
stream: http://www.kqed.org/.stream/real/topics/arts/writers-block/0701-coggins-bloc
k.rm.ram or
download: http://podcastdownload.npr.org/anon.npr-podcasts/podcast/151/510076/7092336/
KQED_7092336.mp3
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