The 18th year of Jazz on Jay!

Concerts are from noon to 1:30pm on Jay Street mall, mid block near Ambition.
Come, buy lunch and hear a variety of the region's jazz musicians in a free concert.

Rain location: Robb Alley at Proctors.

Gals Who Play Jazz

Gals Who Play Jazz is a special project of professional jazz artists and friends, Peg Delaney (piano), Linda Brown (bass), and Patti Melita (vocal). The trio originally teamed up to create a retrospective program for Women’s History Month (March), to showcase the contributions of female composers and musicians of the jazz era. Gals Who Play Jazz can now be seen and heard throughout the year in an assortment of venues, performing insightful and timeless selections from the Great American Song Book and original compositions in the creative and improvisational idiom of jazz.

Peg Delaney plays sophisticated piano jazz, drawing from American, Latin and Brazilian idioms. Her trio has Bill Delaney on upright bass and features fine poignant vocals by drummer Earl Davis. The trio is featured on their CD entitled If I Had You, a wonderful collection that pays homage to seldom heard melodic gems and jazz standards. Earl's warm voice illuminates the beauty of the ballads and the snap of the swing. Her more recent CD entitled Hotline features emotionally evocative Latin Jazz melodies with beautiful interplay between guitar and piano. Peg is a two-time recipient of the New York State Council for the Arts: Meet the Composer grant and was semi-finalist in Musician Magazine’s Best Unsigned Band Competition. Author of a book of transcriptions of solos by Nick Brignola, Peg’s work has been recognized by National Jazz Educators, Saxophone Journal, and New York State Music Teachers Association.

Linda Ellen Brown is freelance double bass and electric bass player who has performed with a variety of artists and groups for the last 35 years. She was a member of the Airwaves jazz band for two decades. The Linda Brown Jazz Project is a series of small ensembles led by Linda that demonstrate the spontaneous role of the jazz bass as collaborator, leader, and improviser in a dynamic setting. The performers illustrate to audiences how jazz artists listen, play and exchange musical ideas in an entertaining idiom. Although Linda has been leading her own groups for the last 15 years, she is most recently a founding member of The Gals Who Play Jazz. She can be also heard on Michael Benedict’s CD, The New Beat. The eldest daughter of Sid and Doris Brown of Schenectady, Linda studied piano with Grace Walrath; guitar with Jack Fragomeni; bass with JB Dyas, Mike Wicks and Rich Syracuse. Linda is a member of AFM Local 14 (Board of Directors 2006-2013) and holds a B.S. in Arts Management and a Masters in Public Administration from UAlbany.

Patti Melita has become known throughout the northeast for her smooth renditions of traditional swing tunes in tempos specifically suited for dancing. With The Gals Who Play Jazz, she is heard performing tunes of various styles. She was a long-time co-director of the celebrated Dance Flurry Festival and, together with Teresa Broadwell, coordinated the Dance Flurry Organization’s monthly swing dance events for sixteen years.  She has been an official consultant at Falcon Ridge Festival in Hillsdale since it began presenting dance events. Patti’s expertise on music that motivates people to dance enabled her to put together a variety of material on her CD, Swing It!, that defies the listener not to dance or, at the very least, begin the toe-tapping exercise. She is the leader of the dance band, Patti-O & The Hip Hooligans. Her other music-related activities include acting as Secretary/Treasurer of the Albany Musicians’ Association, Inc., Local 14 AFM; Treasurer of Swingtime Jazz Society, and Treasurer of A Place For Jazz, Ltd.

Ticket Price: FREE