A Brighter Crooner

Details:

1st Performance:
Doors Open at 6PM
Show Starts at 7PM

2nd Performance:
Doors Open at 8:30PM
Show Starts at 9:30PM

Tickets: $25
($20 Minimum Spend Per Guest)

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About the band:

Rome Neal 
Artistic Theatre Director/Chairman of Board of Directors of Nuyorican Poets Cafe is a multi-award winning actor/director who as a Jazz Vocalist has performed at Town Hall on Broadway, The Metropolitan Room, Carnegie Hall, The Museum of the City of New York, Lenox Lounge, Saint Peter’s Church,  Joe’s Pub, Saint Nick’s Pub, Minton’s Playhouse, National Black Theatre Festival, International African Arts Festival, 966Jazz, For My Sweet, Baker’s Keyboard Lounge in Detroit, The Nuyorican Poets Cafe, The Jazz Spot, The Betty Carter Auditorium for the Arts, and The Brooklyn Music Kitchen. He has also performed around town as the lead vocalist for Bill Lee’s Mo’ Better Quintet (Spike’s father). Rome has a CD entitled: “A Brighter Crooner”, and a live concert DVD “All in The Puddin’.
Neal is also the star of Laurence Holder’s one-man play MONK about Thelonious Monk

Lonnie Plaxico 
was born in Chicago, Illinois, into a musical family, and started playing the bass at the age of twelve, turning professional at fourteen (playing both double bass and bass guitar). His first recording was with his family’s band, and by the time he was twenty he had moved to New York City, where he had stints playing with Chet Baker, Dexter Gordon, Sonny Stitt, Junior Cook, and Hank Jones. He won the Louis Armstrong Jazz Award in 1978.
Plaxico first came to public attention through his work with the Wynton Marsalis group in 1982, though his first regular attachment was with Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers (1983–86), with whom he recorded twelve albums.
In the mid-1980s Plaxico joined the M-Base collective and played on the debut-releases of Steve Coleman (Motherland Pulse, 1985), Cassandra Wilson (Point of View, 1986) and Greg Osby (Sound Theatre, 1987). On Wilson’s recordings he appeared regularly ever since and is the musical director and first bassist of her tour band for more than 15 years. 
In 1986 Jack DeJohnette reformed his Special Edition and engaged beside guitarist Mick Goodrick the M-Base saxophonists Greg Osby and Gary Thomas and Plaxico on bass. The band existed until 1993, after three albums with pianist Michael Cain replacing Goodrick on the last. Plaxico has also performed and recorded with a wide range of artists, including Dizzy Gillespie, David Murray, Alice Coltrane, Stanley Turrentine, Andrew Hill, Joe Sample, Abbey Lincoln, Bill Cosby, Lonnie Liston Smith, Ravi Coltrane, Scott Tixier, Barbara Dennerlein, Helen Sung and Nina Vidal.

Patience Higgins is a New York-based jazz saxophonist, flutist, and multi-reed musician. He also plays clarinet, oboe, and English horn. He has performed with Duke Ellington Orchestra, Barry Harris, Archie Shepp, Jimmy Scott, Stevie Wonder, Ray Charles, Dee Dee Bridgewater, Paquito D’Rivera, Cleo Laine, and The Sugar Hill Jazz Quartet. Higgins has a history as a Broadway musician. He is a music educator and teaches at the New York Jazz Workshop Music School. Higgins has toured with Duke Ellington and Count Basie Orchestras.
In 1998 he was featured artist playing saxophone and flute for double Grammy Award-winning recording Dee Dee Bridgewater’s Dear Ella.
Higgins along with the Sugar Hill Quartet were the house band for the Lenox Lounge, and regular Monday night sessions at St. Nick’s Pub in Harlem. His 1998 album ‘Live in Harlem’ documents Monday night sessions at St. Nick’s Pub.

Nick Scheuble
Drummer and percussionist, Nick Scheuble has performed with many jazz luminaries including Wynton Marsalis, and can be heard on recordings along with Ray Barretto, Dave Valentin, Paragon Ragtime Orchestra and many others. He has also been serving as Grammy nominee Chico Mendoza’s percussionist for over 25 years.
Nick has recently completed a US Embassy directed tour of Uzbekistan (April/May 2022) and before that, a tour of Moldova (former Soviet Union). Nick has also performed at Lincoln Center, Birdland, The Village Gate, Café de Muze (Belgium), Aaron Davis Hall, John Harms Center, Mechanics Hall, and other noted venues throughout America, Eastern and
Western Europe and Central Asia.