Taylor Eigsti Group

“There is no false academic flash in Eigsti’s playing . . .It’s all heart.” —All Music Guide

“[Altura] is a blazingly precise young guitarist.” —New York Times

No musician is more closely or deeply associated with the Workshop than piano phenomenon Taylor Eigsti, so it might come as a surprise to hear that this concert is his first as a leader at the Festival in four years. The pandemic of course accounts for 2020-21, and last year he accompanied the spectacular vocalist Lisa Fischer, bringing a partnership born at the Festival in 2017 back to campus. Focusing more intently on his own music these days, Eigsti is still riding high after his first new album in more than a decade, Tree Falls, earned a 2022 Grammy Award for best contemporary instrumental album. He gleaned the sumptuous, song-centric program from an expansively lyrical body of music he’s sown largely out of public sight while touring internationally with trumpet stars Chris Botti and Terence Blanchard, among other luminaries. Continuing to write and hone his own compositions, he’ll be previewing new material at this concert, which features a group borrowed from Blanchard’s E-Collective. In a fascinating change of context, he’s joined by fellow Blanchardites David Ginyard, Oscar Seaton, and Charles Altura. The wild card is keyboardist Maya Kronfeld, who like Altura is a product of Berkeley High’s vaunted jazz program. Since earning a PhD in comparative literature from UC Berkeley she’s been serving as the Cotsen Fellow in Humanistic Studies at Princeton. Throughout her academic pursuits she’s maintained a steady presence as a player, displaying her deep feel for swing, funk and R&B grooves in a series of combos led by exhilarating drummers, including Justin Brown, Blaque Dynamite, Nikkie Glaspie, Thomas Pridgen, and a recent run with vocalist Thana Alexa’s ONA featuring trap set maestro Antonio Sanchez. Longtime compatriots through their shared Workshop history, Kronfeld is an ideal foil for Eigsti, an artist who always makes the most out of his homecoming Festival performances.