Stars Align for Latin and Jazz Show in Southampton
A series of off-season concerts at the Southampton Arts Center brought many well-known jazz musicians to the South Fork over the winter, including, last month, the renowned bassist Nilson Matta. On Saturday, the “Live at SAC” series will offer a particularly special evening when two musicians who should be familiar to music fans far and wide will meet on the center’s stage.
Randy Brecker, a trumpeter who was an original member of Blood, Sweat and Tears and has played on countless sessions by artists from James Brown to Bruce Springsteen, will join Hector Martignon, a Latin jazz pianist who has performed on more than 100 albums and scored many feature films and Broadway musicals. Mr. Martignon and his group performed at the Parrish Art Museum in Water Mill last month.
Both musicians have just returned to New York after separate engagements in Europe. In the course of their long careers, however, they have occasionally met in the studio and on the stage, such as when Mr. Brecker played on Mr. Martignon’s album “The Foreign Affair.” “He was amazing,” Mr. Martignon, who lives in New York City, said of Mr. Brecker. “He played so beautifully on my CD.” They have also performed together, Mr. Martignon recalled, at venues such as the Village Gate in Manhattan, with the late percussionist Ray Barretto.
“It’s always a pleasure to play with Hector,” Mr. Brecker said last weekend from Menden, Germany, where he was performing with a Hammond B3 organ trio called Hammond Eggs. “He’s a brilliant musician.”
A six-time Grammy Award winner who lives in East Hampton with his wife, Ada Rovatti, a saxophonist, and their daughter, Mr. Brecker is a key figure in the fusion of jazz and rock ’n’ roll. With his brother, the late saxophonist Michael Brecker, he was a top session musician in the late 1960s and ’70s, when musical norms were being torn up and refashioned. In Blood, Sweat and Tears, for example, brass instruments assumed the prominence of the electric guitar in a rock ’n’ roll band. Mr. Brecker performed on the group’s landmark debut album before joining the Horace Silver Quintet and recording his own albums.
“I look at it and I can’t believe we were doing all that,” he said of his long and diverse discography, in a 2015 profile in The Star. Like Mr. Martignon, he maintains a busy performing, recording, and teaching schedule.
“We’re going to play some of his tunes and some of my tunes,” Mr. Martignon said. “We’re going to try to play a hybrid of his music and mine — that’s the idea.”
“The concert with Hector and Randy is a one-night-only experience that will showcase some of the best of Latin and jazz in the world today,” said Claes Brondal, a musician who organizes both the Southampton Arts Center series and the weekly Jazz Jam at Bay Burger in Sag Harbor. “Because of their busy schedules, a concert like this is quite rare and only happens when the stars line up. The group of musicians in this format is unique to this concert — this collaboration is new and exciting.”
Tickets for Hector Martignon and Randy Brecker at Southampton Arts Center, Saturday at 7 p.m., are $15, or $5 for children. Union Cantina restaurant in Southampton will once again provide refreshments and rosé wine from Wolffer Estate in Sagaponack. The doors will open at 6 p.m. for a pre-show reception and viewing of art hosted by Bonhams Auction House, which is sponsoring the concert.