A quartet of jazz students performs in the Bay Area.

By Rob Hayes
Assistant Vice President for Public Information
October 16, 2002

Saxophonist Walter Smith and bassist Mark Kelley perform at Yoshi's.
Photo by Kim Steele
Audio • Mr. E (W.Smith) Listen: slow | fast Recorded at Yoshi's, Sept. 23, 2002   • First Impressions (W.Smith) Listen: slow | fast Recorded at Yoshi's, Sept. 23, 2002

The Berklee Monterey Quartet 2002—Walter Smith, saxophone; Mark Kelley, bass; Albert Sanz, piano; and Kendrick Scott, drums—came to the famed Oakland, California, nightclub after two enthusiastically received performances at the Monterey Jazz Festival. While the Monterey appearances drew raves, Smith and his band seemed to go into overdrive for the nightclub date, reaching yet another level of interplay.

With graduation nearly upon them, the members of the quartet are already highly sought after, with dozens of top-name professional credits, and major awards from Billboard, the International Association of Jazz Educators, and Blue Note Records, to name a few. Leader Walter Smith recently took the Audience Prize in the first International Saxophone Competition at Montreux. He and his bandmates have, between them, performed in the last year with Terence Blanchard, Stefon Harris, Joe Lovano, Kurt Rosenwinkel, John Scofield, and Mark Turner, among others.

The performance was recorded and will be broadcast this fall on KCSM-FM, the San Francisco Bay Area's jazz radio station. You can hear two tunes from the concert by clicking on the song titles above.

Our thanks to Bud Spangler and Brian Walker of Syntropy Audio, who made this recording possible, and Peter Williams and his staff at Yoshi's, for their remarkable hospitality.

Links of Interest
•	Berklee Gives Scholarship at Monterey

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