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Jazz bands are intricate organisms that grow from the rhythm section up, and when a group attains liftoff it’s usually powered by the current flowing between the drummer and the bassist.
As a sidewoman, San Jose-reared drummer Sylvia Cuenca has for three decades been levitating jazz legends such as tenor saxophonist Joe Henderson, pianist Kenny Barron, and trumpeter Clark Terry, who employed her 17 years. But these days she’s just as likely to lead her own combo, and whenever possible Cuenca hires bassist Essiet Okon Essiet, whose two-year stint in Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers confirmed his status as an all-star talent.
More than a superlative rhythm section tandem, Cuenca and Essiet are also a couple who wedded in Los Gatos last September. While maintaining independent careers, the bicoastal couple can often be found swinging with abandon together on bandstands around the Bay Area, like on their far-ranging run of performances in the coming week.
“I’ve learned a lot and I’m still learning from Essiet,” said Cuenca, noting that they were close friends and frequent bandmates for years before they became an item. “We talk about music a lot and he’s been very important for my musical growth.”
Her quartet with Essiet, Bay Area pianist Peter Horvath, and rising New York tenor saxophonist Rico Jones performs July 6 at Mama Kin in San Jose and July 8 at the Stow Lake Boathouse in Golden Gate Park. Essiet leads the group at Monterey’s Carl Cherry Center for Arts July 9 (with guitar great Bruce Forman instead of Horvath).
The quartet plays under Rico Jones’ name at San Francisco’s Black Cat July 12, and Cuenca takes the helm again July 13 at Mr. Tipple’s in San Francisco and July 14 at the Stanford Jazz Festival. No matter who’s leading the band, Cuenca and Essiet generate its irresistible rhythmic thrust.
Born in Omaha to Nigerian parents, Essiet grew up bicultural as his family spent a good deal of time back in Lagos. In the United States, his father’s work as a biochemist for the U.S. government meant the family relocated every few years, so he and his six siblings turned to each other for camaraderie.
“All that moving was rough on some, but not on others,” he said. “For me it was an exciting adventure. We had a built-in group of people. We were always together.”
By the time he reached high school the family was living in Portland, Oregon, and he had traded violin for double bass. Under the tutelage of his Cleveland High band director, Essiet started listening to artists like Miles Davis, Clifford Brown and the Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Orchestra.
“I’d never heard jazz before, and it was really different, mysterious and fascinating,” he recalled. “I got bit by the bug.”
After several years studying at Mt. Hood Community College, which boasted one of the country’s best jazz programs in the mid-‘70s, Essiet became a regular presence on Portland’s bustling jazz scene. A friendship with a Dutch pianist led him to relocate to Amsterdam in 1981, and he quickly made connections across the continent.
By 1982 he was touring internationally with Art Ensemble of Chicago drummer Don Moye’s quartet and bands led by the great South African pianist/composer Abdullah Ibrahim. After several years of flying back and forth between Europe and the U.S. he settled in New York City in 1986, where a gig with Ibrahim at the storied Greenwich Village jazz club Sweet Basil brought Essiet to the attention of Art Blakey.
Known as jazz’s most prolific talent scout, Blakey was still refining jazz’s best young players when Essiet became a Jazz Messenger in 1988, joining a unit that included Berkeley pianist Benny Green.
“Everybody was riding off of Art,” Essiet said. “He was this swing monster. He’d already etched his influence in jazz history, and former Messengers were always sitting in. You can see a YouTube video of a 70th birthday celebration in Germany with a crazy number of guests playing with us, like Wayne Shorter, Jackie McLean, Terence Blanchard, and Freddie Hubbard.”
Essiet stayed with Blakey until the drummer’s death at the end of 1990, then promptly joined Hubbard’s band. He spent several productive years in the mid-‘90s with another former Messenger, saxophonist Bobby Watson and his band Horizon, around the same time he joined pianist (and former Messenger) George Cables, whose trio he still anchors.
Cuenca might have an inside track in hiring Essiet, but he’s a favorite among deep-pocket drummers, like Headhunters legend Mike Clark, who hailed the bassist as a player who “swings hard and all kinds of different ways. He hears the whole picture and is a major part of the conversation, not just keeping time.”
Contact Andrew Gilbert at jazzscribe@aol.com.
SYLVIA CUENCA AND ESSIET ESSIET
When & where: 6 p.m. July 6 at Mama Kin, San Jose; no cover; www.caltix.com; 7:30 p.m. July 7 at Stow Lake Boathouse, San Francisco; $5-$20; www.eventbrite.com (search for “Lakehouse Jazz”); 2 p.m. July 9 at Carl Cherry Center, Monterey; $35; carlcherrycenter.org; 7:30 & 9:30 p.m. July 12 at Black Cat, San Francisco (listed as Rico Jones); $35; blackcatsf.com; 7 and 8:30 p.m. July 13 at Mr. Tipple’s, San Francisco; $12-$25; mrtipplessf.com; 7:30 p.m. July 14 at Campbell Recital Hall, Stanford University (past of Stanford Jazz Festival); $18-$47; stanfordjazz.org.
Originally published at Andrew Gilbert