Bassist Stanley Clarke at the Liberty Avenue Stage II

Stanley Clarke – Bass; Beka Gochiashvili –Piano/Keyboard; Cameron Graves – Keyboard
Shariq Tucker – Drums; Salar Nader – Tabla
Evan Garr – Violin; Travis Rogers – Guitar

Four-time Grammy Award winner Stanley Clarke is undoubtedly one of the most celebrated acoustic and electric bass players in the world. , Clarke is particularly known for his ferocious bass dexterity and consummate musicality. Clarke has 13 Grammy Awards nominations. He has won four times. In 2011 he won a Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Jazz Album, The Stanley Clarke Band, with Ruslan Sirota and Ronald Bruner, Jr., featuring pianist Hiromi. He was also nominated for the “No Mystery” cut as Best Pop Instrumental Performance. The same year Clarke won a Latin Grammy for Best Instrumental Album with Return to Forever’s Forever, along with group members Chick Corea and Lenny White. Forever went on to win him the 2012 Grammy award for Best Instrumental Album. His last album, The Stanley Clarke Band: UP, garnished him a 2015 Grammy Award nomination for Best Jazz Arrangement Instrumental or A Cappella for the song “Last Train to Sanity” and an NAACP Image Award nomination for Best Jazz Album.

Stanley Clarke was barely out of his teens when he exploded into the jazz world in 1971. Fresh out of the Philadelphia Academy of Music, he arrived in New York City and immediately landed jobs with famous bandleaders such as Horace Silver, Art Blakey, Dexter Gordon, Joe Henderson, Pharaoh Saunders, Gil Evans and Stan Getz among others. As a young prodigy he was immediately recognized for his sense of lyricism and melody, which he had distilled from his bass heroes Charles Mingus, Scott LaFaro and others, as well as non-bass players like John Coltrane.

One of Clarke’s musical visions became a reality in the early 1970’s when he met Chick Corea and eventually formed the seminal electric jazz/fusion band Return To Forever. RTF was a showcase for each of the quartet’s strong musical personalities, composing prowess and instrumental voices. In additions to their recent Grammy Award winning Forever CD, the band recorded eight albums, two of which were certified gold (Return To Forever and the classic Romantic Warrior). They also won a Grammy Award (No Mystery) and received numerous nominations while touring incessantly. In 2011 Clarke reunited with founding members, Chick Corea and Lenny White, for the highly anticipated and extremely successful Return To Forever 2-year, 90-city world tour.

Stanley Clarke

Stanley Clarke