Jazz at Progress | Jazz Samba! | Tickets on sale soon
Friday 1 May 2026 | Progress Theatre, Reading | 7: 30pm | £20.00 (£18.00 concessions, £10 under 16) plus maximum 5% booking fee.
Nigel Price guitar, Mark Crooks tenor sax, John Cervantes piano, Marianne Windham bass, Demi Garcia, percussion
“Their love of music and samba oozed from every note played, and the final encore & applause reflected the joy given out by them to a very grateful audience” – Ronnie Scott’s
“First gig of the Spring season and it was a cracker! The audience loved it!” – Jazz Steps, Nottingham
Jazz Samba! takes its inspiration and name from Stan Getz and Charlie Byrd’s ground-breaking 1962 album, the first ever fully-fledged bossa nova album recorded by American jazz musicians which topped the LP charts on its release and produced its own pop hit single – ‘Desafinado’
Led by star soloist Mark Crooks on sax and clarinet and the award-winning guitarist Nigel Price, with John Cervantes (piano), Marianne Windham (double bass) and Demi Garcia Sabat (drums/percussion), this is a joyous celebration of the blending of Brazilian rhythms, jazz attitude and the majestic compositions of Antonio Carlos Jobim, Joao Donato and Sergio Mendes alongside tributes to Stan Getz’s legendary “Latin thing”.
The band’s performance is described as exciting, intense, and satisfying, conveying both joy and the authentic spirit of Latin jazz and Bossa Nova.
Mark Crooks is a lyrical and passionate saxophonist in the Stan Getz mould. He has appeared at jazz clubs and festivals throughout Europe, and at the Lincoln Centre in New York and is a long-standing member of the John Wilson Orchestra with which he has played regularly at BBC Proms.
Guitarist Nigel Price is of course one of the heroes of the British Jazz Scene with over 500 appearances at Ronnie Scott’s, three years with the James Taylor Quartet and winner of the British Jazz Awards and Parliamentary Jazz Awards.
The band also features John Cervantes on piano, whose strong roots in the swinging jazz tradition are overlaid with classical and world music influences in, as he puts it, his “quest to express those undefinable flashes of life, creation, emotion & passion that make music so powerful”. His appearance at some of the biggest jazz festivals in the country bear testament to his success! Percussionist Demi Garcia Sabat brings a wealth of experience in flamenco, jazz, Arabic, Latin, Iberian folk and pop music, having toured all over Europe, North Africa, and USA, Marianne Windham, the founder of Guildford Jazz and a well-respected and in demand player, completes the lineup on double bass.
