NO COVER 7:00pm Show
JC Sanford's Imminent Standards Trio, featuring Sanford on trombone, Anthony Cox on bass, and Phil Hey on drumset, will play two sets of their own unique take on jazz standards.
Anthony Cox is an internationally renowned arranger, composer, performer, recording artist, and educator. His career has spanned over 30 years of music education, composition, and performance, including an extensive list of collaborations, performances, and recordings with notable artists in the field of jazz. The list includes Sam Rivers, Joe Lovano, Geri Allen, Kenny Wheeler, Ed Blackwell, Billy Higgins, John Scofield, The NDR Big Band, Dino Saluzzi, and Henry Threadgill.
Phil Hey is an American jazz drummer born in New York City and based in the Twin Cities. He started his music study with mentor and legendary jazz drummer Ed Blackwell at the Creative Music Studio in New York in 1975. He has also studied with Floyd Thompson and Marv Dahlgren, the former principal percussionist of the Minnesota Orchestra. Hey performs with several groups and leads the Phil Hey Quartet with Tom Lewis on bass, Dave Hagedorn on vibraphone, and Phil Aaron on piano. The quartet’s album Subduction: Live at Artist’s Quarter (2005) was named Best Jazz CD of the Year by the Twin Cities alternative weekly newspaper City Pages. City Pages also named him 2006 Jazz Musician of the Year. He has worked with Dewey Redman, Jay McShann, Mose Allison, Benny Carter, Charlie Rouse, Harold Land, Charlie Byrd, David “Fathead” Newman, Geoff Keezer, Mark Murphy, Benny Golson, Stacey Kent, and Kenny Barron.
After spending 16 years in New York City as a professional musician, trombonist/composer JC Sanford returned to Minnesota in 2016. His most recent projects include a trio with pianist Michael Cain and bassist Anthony Cox called New Past and his Imminent Standards Trio, which released consecutive recordings in 2021 and 2022. He has regularly been recognized as a “Rising Star” trombonist in DownBeat Critic Polls over the past several years, and he is the conductor of the thrice-Grammy-nominated John Hollenbeck Large Ensemble. JC has performed as a trombonist with the likes of Danilo Pérez, Matt Wilson, and George Schuller, and he has been an ensemble member in groups such as Nathan Parker Smith’s prog-rock big band, Andrew Green’s film noir tribute Narrow Margin, singer-songwriter Joy Askew’s New York Brass, and Joseph C. Phillips, Jr.’s jazz/new music hybrid Numinous. He received a 2018 McKnight Composer Fellowship and has received several Minnesota State Arts Board grants in recent years. He currently co-leads the modern jazz orchestra Inatnas Orchestra with his award-winning wife, composer Asuka Kakitani.
