Monterey Jazz Festival on Tour 55th Anniversary Celebration Comes to Mesa Arts Center, 4/26

The Mesa Arts Center will host the longest consecutively running jazz festival, Monterey. Celebrate the Festival's legacy of expanding the boundaries of live jazz presentation on Friday, April 26 in the Ikeda Theater at 8 p.m. Tickets are available through the Mesa Arts Center Box Office at MesaArtsCenter.com or by calling 480-644-6500.

This 55th Anniversary Tour presents an All-Star Jazz Collaboration of the acclaimed jazz artists Dee Dee Bridgewater, Christian McBride, Ambrose Akinmusire, Chris Potter, Benny Green, and Lewis Nash. This Tour also reflects Monterey's "traditional-untraditionalist" attitude, jazz-with-a-purpose exuberance, and joyful fun that continue to be the trademark of the Monterey Jazz Festival to this day. Dee Dee Bridgewater has had a multi-faceted career that has spanned four decades. She has risen to the top of today's jazz vocalists by putting her own spin on standards and bravely re-envisioning jazz classics. Christian McBride is a bassist, bandleader, educator, artistic director, and Grammy Award winner. Ambrose Akinmusire is a startling fresh young talent as a trumpeter-composer whose first album When the Heart Emerges Glistening has been called "nothing short of a manifesto".

Chris Potter is a world-class soloist, an accomplished composer, a formidable bandleader, and a talented saxophonist. Down Beat called him "One of the most studied, and copied, saxophonists on the planet". Benny Green is a master of keyboard technique and has decades of real world experience playing with some of the most celebrated artists of the last half century. Finally, Lewis Nash is an American jazz drummer who grew up in Phoenix, Arizona. Nash always seems to be at home in a wide range of stylistic territory including funk, free, and Latin-based jazz styles.