Jeff Bordes & Friends: A Jazzy-Funky Christmas December 8, 2012

Jeff Bordes & Friends returns for the second annual big Holiday Concert at the Firehouse Arts Center. This year's theme is 'A Jazzy-Funky Christmas', and will again feature a host of special guest artists, including organist and vocalist Don Lewis, a perennial local favorite. Also on the bill is swinging local big band group The CoolTones. Bordes says the program will include a number of other terrific surprise guests.

Included in the program will be numbers Jeff dubs "bluegrazz", merging bluegrass and jazz. "We will be performing some music with a back-porch jazz feel, as if we were hanging out on the porch of a cabin in the swamps of Louisiana, playing holiday music and having a good time...This group will feature bluegrass instruments including fiddle and washboard," says Bordes.

Bay Area jazz trumpeter and Pleasanton native Jeff Bordes needs no introduction to jazz fans. A 1997 graduate of the famed jazz school Berklee College of Music in Boston, Bordes has been not only playing since very young, but changing the face of jazz. Career highlights include live performances and recording projects with such greats as Branford Marsalis, Alex Acuna, Richie Cole, Tom Petty, Stevie Nicks, Sheryl Crow, and most recently John Mellencamp. He has done performance tours of the US and internationally with a number of groups, including Bill Berry Big Band and the great Dizzy Gillespie.

A 'sell-out' last year, the show is back by popular demand. Showcasing holiday favorites with "a taste of New Orleans and the soul of the Blues," Jeff Bordes & Friends should again be a hot holiday ticket.

Official Website: http://www.firehousearts.org