IN CONCERT
What: Cory Weeds Quintet
Where: Rubber Boot Club, 1605 Store St. (Below Swans Hotel)
When: Thursday, May 24, 8:30 p.m.
Tickets: $30.50 at Royal and McPherson Theatre (rmts.bc.ca/tickets-and-events )
At 82, Harold Mabern is “a living legend” who has seen it all in his decades on the stage.
That’s the word from bandmate Cory Weeds, who will be joined by Mabern in the Cory Weeds Quintet at the Rubber Boot Club tonight.
Joining them for their Victoria Jazz Society show at the Rubber Boot — a recently rejuvenated performance space in the basement of Swans Hotel & Brewpub — are trumpeter Terell Stafford, bassist Michael Glynn and Julian MacDonough on drums.
The list of people self-taught pianist Mabern has worked with during his illustrious career includes Lionel Hampton, Sonny Rollins, Jimmy Forrest and Freddie Hubbard.
“He’s played with everybody, literally everybody,” said Weeds, a Vancouver-based saxophonist and the lone Canadian in the ensemble. “And he’s a bit of a freak of nature, he’s 82 years old and he still has the vitality and the wit and charm, and playing ability, of a person half his age.
“He takes good care of himself and the music keeps him young.”
Mabern has been on the faculty of William Paterson University in Wayne, New Jersey, since 1981 and serves as an instructor at the Stanford Jazz Workshop.
He is a joy to be around, Weeds said.
“I’ve had the great pleasure of getting to know him and tour with him and record with him in the past, and it’s always a lot of fun,” he said. “To be able to share the stage with him is really special.”
Stafford is another singular talent who is part of the Grammy-winning Vanguard Jazz Orchestra, as well as the director of jazz studies and chairman of instrumental studies at Temple University in Philadelphia. He has previously played shows in Vancouver with Weeds.
“I managed to strike up a relationship with Terell on Facebook,” Weeds said. “We had a kindred spirit, if you will, we like a lot of the same music. He has a great deal of respect for me and what I’ve done, and vice versa.”
Getting Mabern and Stafford to perform together with him has been about a year in the making, Weeds said.
As for Weeds, he founded and owned the eponymous Cory Weeds’ Cellar Jazz Club in Vancouver, and hosted jazz luminaries there for 13 years before its closure in 2014. He, too, has performed with an impressive list of artists — Jeff Hamilton, David “Fathead” Newman and many more — and has made numerous albums such as the Juno-nominated Up a Step and The Many Deeds of Cory Weeds.
He shares his vast knowledge of jazz on occasion as a host of tours to take in the New Your jazz scene, and most recently the Chicago jazz scene.
Weeds said his quintet will be performing a series of shows, with the Rubber Boot appearance to be part of a tour that began Tuesday in Vancouver and went to Bellingham on Wednesday before reaching Victoria today.
“Friday we’re in Nanaimo, Saturday we’re in Vancouver — which is a live recording — and then Sunday we have a private house concert that we’re doing,” Weeds said.
“So it’s a nice little run.”
