Trumpeter Michael Morreale and saxophonist Jon Gordon, two Staten Islanders, are bringing their tasty jazz to Albuquerque and Santa Fe.

When drummer John Trentacosta moved from Staten Island to New Mexico back in 1992, little did we know that he was, in fact, a sleeper cell spearheading an ongoing Staten Island invasion of top-notch musicians from that often overlooked borough of New York City. But several years after his arrival, he invited trumpeter and composer Michael Morreale to New Mexico to record a couple of fine albums with the NM group Straight Up. Morreale has graced NM stages regularly ever since while maintaining his stature as one of New York’s finer jazz artists and a respected educator in jazz studies at the College of Staten Island (City University of New York).

Both Trentacosta and Morreale were well-known to saxophonist Jon Gordon. “I remember hearing both of those guys. Let’s say maybe when I was in high school,” says Gordon, winner of the Thelonious Monk International Jazz Saxophone Competition in 1996.

Morreale and Gordon made a personal connection in New Mexico. “The first time I actually met Jon was in New Mexico,” says Morreale. “Now, he played the Outpost in ’98, but I think it was after that. He was touring with Harry Connick and had a day off.” Morreale and Trentacosta met up with him for coffee.

That meeting has flowered into several collaborations between Morreale and Gordon. “We did some gigs together and a couple of recordings of his,” says Gordon, “and I recommended him to a guy named Gino Moratti who booked one of the great jazz clubs in New York before the pandemic called Kitano. Mike worked a series of gigs there, and I think I did most of those with him, and we did a concert at the College of Staten Island.” (Check out Morreale’s albums Stories of Recent Vintage and Love and Influence, which include Gordon and showcase Morreale’s fine compositions, as well as his most recent release, Power Trio, available on the usual streaming services.)

Last year, while at the Outpost, Morreale saw a poster of the Outpost’s 1998 season, which had included Gordon. Back in 1998, Gordon was in the process of launching an impressive career as a premiere jazz artist, composer, and educator following the Monk competition. Morreale snapped a photo of the poster and sent it off to Gordon, which sparked the idea for this week’s gig together.

“John and Mike reached out to me in the winter and said, “Hey, we’re looking to book something in the spring. Can you do it?’ ” The timing worked out perfectly for Gordon, who was planning a tour around his fine new album, 7th Ave South, that will take him throughout the Northeast and to England. Named for the long-gone Brecker Brothers–owned club on the avenue of the same name, the album offers a paean to a fertile time and place for live jazz in New York City. The club was the first place Gordon heard jazz in the city. Invited there by a classmate’s mother, the late jazz maven Margaret Davis, he heard the Art Taylor Quartet, with trumpeter Clark Terry, saxophonist Branford Marsalis, and bassist Ron Carter.

The new album celebrates community—the one from which Gordon emerged in his early days and the one that he helps nurture now as a musician and a professor at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, Canada. Most of the players on the album, which features tenor saxophonist Walter Smith III, trombonist Alan Ferber, trumpeter Jon Challenor, bass clarinetist John Ellis, guitarist Jocelyn Gould, pianist Will Bonness, bassist Julian Bradford, drummer Fabio Rangnelli, and vocalists Joanna Majoko and Erin Propp, are fellow faculty or former students at the school. “A lot of the people I looked up to as mentors always told me to pass it on,” Gordon says. “I’m at that stage of my life, so I wanted to do my part to create that sense of community and interconnectedness that hopefully remains a part of what we do as musicians.”

In Albuquerque at the Outpost this Thursday, 5/16, and in Santa Fe at Paradiso this Friday, 5/17, Morreale and Gordon, along with Trentacosta, will represent their Staten Island community, with help from pianist Bob Fox and bassist Terry Burns. It should prove to be a satisfying evening of top-drawer jazz music, including compositions by both Morreale and Gordon, as well as a few standards.

Jon Gordon–Michael Morreale Quintet
Thursday, May 16, 7:30 p.m.
Weil Hall at the Outpost Performance Space
210 Yale SE, Albuquerque
Tickets: $15–$40
For tickets or more information, go here.

Friday, May 17, 7:00 p.m.
Paradiso
903 Early Street, Santa Fe
Tickets: $30–$35
For tickets or more information, go here.

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© 2024 Mel Minter