Marcus Shelby Orchestra at Yerba Buena Gardens Festival at Yerba Buena Gardens

About

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.