The Cookers – 20th Anniversary

The Cookers bring expressive language to the bandstand and to their six critically acclaimed recordings: Warriors, Cast the First Stone, Believe, Time and Time Again, The Call of the Wild and Peaceful Heart and Look Out!. This exciting all-star septet summons up an intense mid-60s spirit with a potent collection of post-bop originals marked by the requisite instincts and pyrotechnic playing expected of these heavy hitters.

Eddie Henderson, Cecil McBee, George Cables, and Billy Hart all came up in the heady era of the mid-60s as members of some of the most important bands of the era. Hart and Henderson were members of Herbie Hancock’s groundbreaking Mwandishi group; Cecil McBee anchored Charles Lloyd’s great ‘60s quartet alongside Keith Jarrett and Jack DeJohnette; while Cables held down the piano chair in numerous bands including groups led by Sonny Rollins, Joe Henderson, Freddie Hubbard, Dexter Gordon and Art Pepper. David Weiss, Donald Harrison, and Azar Lawrence, from a more recent generation, are experts in this forthright lingo, having gained experience performing with Art Blakey, Bobby Hutcherson, Freddie Hubbard, Charles Tolliver, Roy Haynes and Herbie Hancock.

The Cookers “embody the serious-as-death commitment that it took to thrive on the New York scene some four decades ago” (The Boston Globe). After seventeen years together, their latest record Look Out! embodies the band’s incredibly high level of musicianship, which has only increased with this offering of fresh, challenging, boundary-pushing music. 

The Cookers Website 
(Ticket Includes 5% City of Santa Cruz Admission Tax)