Faculty pianist Marc Seales is joined by UW colleagues Steve Rodby (bass) and John-Carlos Perea (flute) and special guests Thomas Marriott (trumpet) and Moyes Lucas (drums) for this concert of original tunes and unique arrangements of jazz and pop classics.
Biographies
Moyes Lucas
Los Angeles drummer Moyes Lucas developed his love for the drums at an early age, from the time his dad took him to his first parade. His father, a part-time drummer and sax player, introduced his son to the talents and sounds of jazz greats like Max Roach, Philly Joe Jones, Art Blakely, and The Heath Brothers.
Growing up, Lucas appreciated several musical styles and grew intrigued with the sounds of the band Chicago, especially the integration of the horns. He played their music continually, using anything he could to simulate a drum set. Understanding that he needed a real drum set to improve his own talents, he got a paper-route, repaired lawnmowers, and eventually saved up the $300 he needed to buy his first set of drums: a used Ludwig drum set, complete with cymbals.
Moyes attended Western Washington University, where he was greatly influenced by Bill Cole, director of the jazz department. He earned money playing in local jazz taverns and doing studio work. After college he moved to Seattle. By this time his musical style included rock.
Today Moyes lives in the Los Angeles area and continues to work and tour with many talented artists.
Thomas Marriott
Trumpeter, composer, and producer Thomas Marriott is a force for jazz on the west coast. He’s paid dues beside jazz elders such as Maynard Ferguson, Roy McCurdy, Roger Humphries, Mike Clark and Stix Hooper, and has been called on by contemporary standard-bearers like Joe Locke, Orrin Evans, Steve Wilson, and Charlie Hunter.
A chameleon of musical styles, Marriott’s horn has been in-demand with bands like the Grammy-Award winning Spanish Harlem Orchestra, Captain Black Big Band, Ivan Neville’s Dumpstafunk, hip-hop pioneer Deltron 3030 , and vocalists Kurt Elling, Ernestine Anderson, Michael Feinstein and Rosemary Clooney.
His own albums, 14 in all, have reached number one on the jazz radio airplay charts, earned 4 1/2 stars in Downbeat, and have been featured on NPR. Thomas Marriott has won 9 Golden Ear Awards, the Carmine Caruso Trumpet Competition, is the youngest inductee into the Seattle Jazz Hall of Fame, spent more than 20 seasons as a soloist with the Seattle Repertory Jazz Orchestra and is founder of Seattle Jazz Fellowship, a non-profit arts organization dedicated to promoting jazz music and jazz culture in Seattle. In 2024 he was named a “Jazz Hero” by the Jazz Journalists Association.
John-Carlos Perea (Mescalero Apache, Irish, Chicano, German) joins the faculty of the School of Music at the University of Washington in Fall 2023 as Associate Professor of Ethnomusicology. He has previously served as Associate Professor and Chair of American Indian Studies at San Francisco State University (2010-2023), as Visiting Associate Professor in the Department of Music at UC Berkeley (2021-22), and as Visiting Researcher, Composer, and Performer (2022-23) at the Center for New Music and Audio Technologies (CNMAT).
An electric bassist, singer, cedar flutist, composer, and ethnomusicologist, John-Carlos Perea’s research interests include jazz and improvised music performance and composition, urban American Indian lived experiences and cultural productions, music technologies, recording and archiving practices, social constructions of "noise," Native and African American jazz cultures, and the Creek and Kaw saxophonist Jim Pepper.
In addition to his scholarly activities, Perea maintains an active career as a GRAMMY® Award winning multi-instrumentalist and recording artist. He has recorded on eighteen albums as a sideman and three as a leader, First Dance (2001), Creation Story (2014), and Cedar Flute Songs (2023). In April 2019, Perea was recognized by the San Francisco Arts Commission’s American Indian Initiative for his musical contribution “to reclaim space, to challenge false narratives, and to reimagine public art from the perspective of Indigenous Peoples.”
A noted pianist, composer and leading figure in the Northwest jazz scene, Marc Seales has shared stages with many of the great players of the last two decades. He has played with nearly every visiting jazz celebrity from Joe Henderson and Art Pepper to Benny Carter, Mark Murphy, and Bobby Hutcherson. With the late Don Lanphere he performed in such places as London, England; Kobe, Japan; The Hague in the Netherlands; and the North Sea Jazz Festival.
The musicians he admires most are Herbie Hancock, Charlie Parker, John Lewis, John Coltrane, Miles Davis, and Wynton Kelly, though he is quick to acknowledge that he owes the basically be-bop/post be-bop sound of his playing to his mentors, Don Lanphere and Floyd Standifer.
Critics have praised Seales variously for his "meaty piano solos," and "blues inflected, Hancock-inspired modernism." Winner of numerous Earshot awards (Instrumentalist of the Year in 1999 and Acoustic Jazz Group in 2000 and 2001; Jazz Hall of Fame, 2009), Seales is today promoting jazz awareness and molding young talents as a Professor of Music at the University of Washington, where he is a professor in the Jazz Studies Program. He teaches an array of courses, including History of Jazz, Jazz Piano, and Beginning and Advanced Improvisation, as well as leading various workshops and ensembles.