Michael Echaniz Trio plays at the Jazz Station in Eugene
Seven Shades of Violet (Rebiralost) - Debut Album Release Show
★★★★ "This is simply great, challenging music." - Brian Morton, DownBeat
- Michael Echaniz piano, synthesizer
- Jeff Denson bass, vocals
- Dillon Vado drums
Michael Echaniz is one of the brightest musicians, composers, and artists emerging from the West Coast. A pianist since five, Michael has studied music at California Jazz Conservatory (B.M.), and CalArts (MFA). Michael is an avid performer, playing and recording alongside internationally renowned artists and pillars of the Bay Area music scene such as Jeff Denson, Romain Pilon, Wu Man, Gerald Cleaver, Paul McCandless, Scott Amendola, Erik Jekabson’s Electric Squeezebox Orchestra, Dillon Vado, Alan Hall, Steve Lugerner, and Friction Quartet in venues such as Piedmont Piano Company, Black Cat, the Art Boutiki, Yoshi’s, and Carnegie Hall’s Stern Auditorium, as well as Umbria, Montreux, Fillmore, and Portola Vineyards jazz festivals. Michael has won numerous awards, mostly recently, Honorable Mentions in the 2023 Unsigned Only and 2022 International Songwriting Competition, a New Music Workshop at the 2022 International Jazz Composers’ Symposium (ISJAC), and the prestigious 2021 ASCAP Herb Alpert Young Jazz Composers Award. On September 8th, 2023, Michael released Seven Shades of Violet (Rebiralost), an ambitious, virtuosic, symmetrical concept album of original compositions and arrangements on Ridgeway Records, supported by InterMusic SF’s 2020 Musical Grant Program and New Music USA’s Creator Development Fund in 2022-23. The debut has received wide critical acclaim, including a coveted 4-star review in Downbeat Magazine. Michael’s forward-thinking original music embraces rhythmic complexity, haunting melodicism, fluidity between improvisation and through-composition, influence from disparate styles of classical, world, and pop music, and deep emotional connection.
Jeff Denson has released 16 albums as a leader or co-leader and toured extensively throughout the U.S., Canada and Europe with both his own groups and others at some of the world’s most prestigious venues and festivals such as the Village Vanguard, Birdland, The Kennedy Center, JVC Jazz Festival Paris, Montreal Jazz Festival, Berlin Jazz Festival, and SFJazz to name a few. Jeff has worked with some of jazz’s finest artists such as Brian Blade, Joe Lovano, Chris Potter, Billy Childs, Jane Ira Bloom, Dave Douglas, Walter Smith III, Kendrick Scott, Rachel Z, Omar Hakim, Gerald Cleaver, Warren Wolf, Leo Genovese, Edward Simon, Paul McCandless, Cuong Vu, Ralph Alessi, Dan Weiss, Lionel Loueke, Romain Pilon, and Mimi Fox, among many others and had an ongoing relationship with the legendary Lee Konitz for over a decade until his passing in 2020. Jeff has been ranked in the DownBeat Rising Star Critic's Poll ten times in the Bass, Electric Bass and Male Vocalist categories, and was voted #1 Rising Star Electric Bassist in 2021. Jeff is the Founder and Artistic Director of Ridgeway Arts, Inc., a 501c3 arts nonprofit organization and the Dean of Instruction at the California Jazz Conservatory in Berkeley.
Dillon Vado is a drummer and vibraphonist who plays music that is an honest representation of a broad range of influences. Dillon is known for making music that is dynamic and complex but memorable and relatable. As comfortable laying down Brazilian grooves on drum set as he is improvising with poets and dancers on vibraphone, Dillon can be found playing with many of his own projects including The Table Trio, and Amy D on vibes and drumming/composing for Never Weather, who released their debut album Blissonance in 2020.
As a sideman, Dillon can be found performing with skilled vocalists like Christelle Durandy, Danielle Wertz and Amy Dabalos, Brazilian music with Marcos Silva, the Oakland Samba Revue and Sandy Cressman, and many other projects including The Electric Squeezebox Orchestra, Silvestre Martinez and his Bad Hombres, Michael Echaniz, and the Marcus Shelby Jazz Orchestra.
