Wayne Escoffery Quartet, featuring Dave Kikoski, Ugonna Okegwo and Marvin “Smitty” Smith”
Will Grammy Award-winning tenor saxophonist Wayne Escoffery have a tennis racket on stage when he performs here Wednesday at a concert that will include music by San Diego-bred jazz sax great Harold Land?
Land, a Houston native who moved here with his family when he was 5, was an avid tennis player who could swing as hard on the court as he could on concert stages. Or, as Land told me in a 1995 Union-Tribune interview: “If you’re a person who attempts to play with a lot of fire and intensity, which I try to the best of my ability to do, then it ends up taking quite a bit of stamina, mentally and physically. So the similarities correspond between the music and tennis.”
A 1946 San Diego High School graduate and a member of trumpeter and singer Fro Brigham’s band here, Land moved to Los Angeles in 1954 and joined the storied Max Roach/Clifford Brown quintet. The protean sax man went on to become a noted band leader himself and a frequent recording partner of Thelonious Monk, Wes Montgomery, Bill Evans and other legends. Land, who died in 2001 at the age of 73, was a master of bebop, swing, blues, hard bop and more.
London native Escofferey grew up in New Haven, Ct., where — in 2016 — he became a lecturer on jazz improvisation at Yale University. He was 21 when he began touring with piano giant Herbie Hancock in 1996.
Equally acclaimed as a solo artist, a mainstay of the Mingus Big Band and a collaborator of numerous jazz luminaries, Escoffery has studied Land’s music at length. Hearing him pay homage to Land — in the same neighborhood Land grew up in — will be a double treat. 7:30 p.m. Wednesday.
Athenaeum Jazz at Bread & Salt, 1955 Julian Avenue, San Diego. $15 (students), $25 (Athenaeum members) $30 (non-members). (858) 454-5872; ljathenaeum.org/events-jazz-23-1018
San Diego-bound gangsta rap pioneer-turned-actor-and-film-director Ice Cube is shown performing at last year’s Riot Fest in Chicago. He celebrated his 54th birthday on June 15.
(Rob Grabowski / Rob Grabowski/invision/ap)
Throwback Jam, featuring Ice Cube, Warren G, Rob Base, The Sugarhill Gang, A Lighter Shade of Brown, Grandmaster Melle Mel and Scorpio of The Furious Five
This may not be the year’s single biggest national tour celebrating hip-hop’s 50th anniversary.
But with a lineup that includes gangsta-rap pioneer-turned-actor-and-film-producer Ice Cube, the current iteration of “Rapper’s Delight” veterans The Sugarhill Gang, and Rock & Roll Hall of Famers Scorpio and Melle Mel, it’s a notable one.
That all the performers are now in their 50s and 60s should provide the concert an air of nostalgia for a genre still largely fueled by youthful bravado.
The absence of any female artists in the lineup is baffling — and inexcusable.
7:30 p.m. tonight. Pechanga Arena San Diego, 3500 Sports Arena Blvd., Loma Portal. $45-$175. axs.com/events
Shahzad Ismaily, Marc Ribot and Ches Smith of the band Ceramic Dog are shown arriving at the Gucci show during Milan Fashion Week Fall/Winter 2023/24 on January 13, 2023 in Milan, Italy. They will perform Wednesday at The Loft at UC San Diego.
(Pietro S. D’Aprano / Getty Images for Gucci)
Marc Ribot’s Ceramic Dog
Is there any style of contemporary music guitar great Marc Ribot can’t perform with equal skill and imagination?
The New Jersey native rose to prominence in the mid-1980s as a key member in the band of former San Diegan Tom Waits. The same decade also saw him perform on albums by Elvis Costello, Solomon Burke, Maria McKee, Brazlian tropicalismo pioneer Caetano Veloso, The Lounge Lizards, Syd Straw and cutting-edge music champion John Zorn.
In the years since, Ribot has collaborated with Marianne Faithfull, DJ Logic, Diana Krall, The Black Keys, McCoy Tyner, Wadada Leo Smith, Allen Ginsberg, Faith No More’s Mike Patton, trip-hop pioneer Tricky, and — more recently — Joan Jett, David Sanborn, Robert Plant and Alison Krauss.
The subject of the 2007 film documentary, “The Lost String,” Ribot has made at least 30 albums as a solo artist and band leader. His Wednesday performance here will be with the high-octane power trio Ceramic Dog, which teams him with electric bass ace Shahzad Ismaily and former San Diego drum phenom Ches Smith. Expect sparks to fly staring with the first downbeat.
8 p.m. Wednesday. The Loft at UC San Diego, 9500 Gillman Drive, La Jolla. $16-$40. artpower.ucsd.edu
