Todd Barkan Presents "Keystone Korner Nights At The Iridium" To Begin Jan 2

[Lois Gilbert]

Jazz Impresario Todd Barkan (Keystone Korner, Dizzy's Club Coca Cola) To Curate New 100-Night Series at NYC's Iridium

Todd Barkan, the legendary jazz promoter and producer behind the famed Keystone Korner in San Francisco along with Dizzy's Club Coca Cola at Jazz at Lincoln Center in NYC, will curate and host a major new series of shows at The Iridium in 2013. Dubbed "Todd Barkan Presents Keystone Korner Nights at The Iridium," the series will launch January 2 with a celebration of Wes Montgomery featuring Jimmy Cobb, Harold Mabern, Eric Alexander, Peter Bernstein, and John Webber. Barkan will present roughly 100 shows at The Iridium throughout the year on Wednesday and Sunday nights.

For more than 45 years, Barkan has distinguished himself as one of the world's most celebrated jazz concert and record producers. He first gained international attention as the owner, manager, and booker of the legendary San Francisco jazz club Keystone Korner, which was the site of countless historic recordings by artists including Miles Davis, McCoy Tyner, Grover Washington, Jr., and Bill Evans among others. Barkan has programmed festivals and clubs around the world and produced hundreds of records, earning a staggering two-dozen Grammy nominations along the way. In 2000, he accepted Wynton Marsalis's invitation to serve as the Artistic Administrator for Jazz at Lincoln Center, and since 2004 he has also served as Programming Director and Emcee of Jazz at Lincoln Center's Dizzy's Club Coca-Cola.

"This is a chance to really broaden my artistic horizons," says Barkan, whose legacy is showcased in a recent book by Kathy Sloane, 'Keystone Korner: Portrait of a Jazz Club.' "Even though I've been booking shows in New York for 30 years, this is the first time there's ever been a 'Todd Barkan Presents' series."

"What Todd brings to the table is experience and passion for the music," says Iridium owner Ron Sturm, "and I think he's going to be essential to our team. As the home of Les Paul, we have the dual heritages here of guitars and jazz. We're confident that Todd's vision is symbiotic with our imaginative and creative approach to presenting both."

Opening night for the series will feature several jazz legends in their own right. Drummer Jimmy Cobb is the only surviving member of the band that recorded 'Kind of Blue,' Miles Davis' 1959 masterpiece and the best-selling acoustic jazz album of all time, and he and Harold Mabern were major musical collaborators with Wes Montgomery, both in concert performances and on his historic hit recordings. The show will be webcast in HD at http://www.iridiumlive.com.

Stay tuned for more info on upcoming shows in the series.

[BFrank]

Always nice to see his name come up. I saw MANY great shows at the late, great KK in the 70s.

[Sharon]

I am looking so forward to these offerings and glad that they will be webcast since I'm located out on the left coast. My dearly departed husband Tom Hoffmann and his trio played at Keystone Korner shortly before it closed and he was a teacher at UMA where he helped build one of the first Jazz Studies departments in the nation, a jazz and contemporary classical guitarist, composer, arranger extraordinaire. Thank you.

[Valerie]

I am looking so forward to these offerings and glad that they will be webcast since I'm located out on the left coast. My dearly departed husband Tom Hoffmann and his trio played at Keystone Korner shortly before it closed and he was a teacher at UMA where he helped build one of the first Jazz Studies departments in the nation, a jazz and contemporary classical guitarist, composer, arranger extraordinaire. Thank you.

Welcome, Sharon. Nice to have you here! I've been a jazz fan for a very long time and have lived on the left coast (L.A.) for over 40 years. Unbelievably, I missed going to Keystone Korner when I visited SF. Did go to a lot of the other SF jazz haunts though, all of them gone now.