Internationally acclaimed bassist/composer Marcus Shelby occupies his own niche in the Bay Area’s jazz eco-system. As the leader of a powerfully swinging 15-piece big band and the Yerba Buena Gardens Festival resident composer, he’s used the ensemble as a vehicle for developing epic works exploring the abiding ties between jazz and blues and African-American social and political movements. Back in the Bay Area after a widely hailed collaboration with Anna Deavere Smith on her trenchant Off-Broadway play Notes From the Field, Shelby presents work-in-progress excerpts from Black Ball: The Negro Leagues and the Blues and past Yerba Buena Gardens Festival commissioned pieces, including Green and Blues and Beyond the Blues.
 

 
Presented with support from
The MAP Fund is primarily supported by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation. Additional funds come from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.