Carmen Staaf's Sounding Line

Like pretty much everyone else—including her former teachers Herbie Hancock and Wayne Shorter and her now-frequent collaborators Allison Miller and Jenny Scheinman—we were moved and mightily impressed by Carmen Staaf the first time we heard her play. We’re thrilled to welcome her back to open our twentieth season with a preview of her new album, Sounding Line, a set of duo, trio, and quartet pieces that plumb the depths of jazz piano history to explore the converging musical currents where Thelonious Monk meets Mary Lou Williams.

Born in Seattle, Staaf was a fellow at UCLA’s Thelonious Monk (now Herbie Hancock) Institute of Jazz, then rose to become a fixture of the improvised music scenes in New York and—in part through her teaching at the renowned Stanford Jazz Workshop—the Bay Area. (The new record was tracked in Oakland with other prominent members of that latter community, several of whom join her…