Concert | R&B Sounds with Yaz Band and The Hot Sardines

Music lovers are invited to bring lunch, join friends and relax to enjoy a taste of New York’s eclectic “underground” music scene.

Yasuyuki “YAZ” Takagi, of Osaka Japan formed YAZ BAND in 2002. The quartet heats up a classic mix of R&B and Stevie Wonder, Earth Wind & Fire and Marvin Gaye and their original influences Grover Washington, Jr., Maceo Parker and The Crusaders. The band has released a number of CDs that capture their sound - ‘YAZ’, ’You Can’t Say It In Public’ and ‘RUSH HOUR’- all have been well-received by both critics and the public. Yaz Band has gained further recognition through the MUNY program in the underground, in clubs, at the Lincoln Center Out-of-Doors festival, the historic Minton's Playhouse, numerous other venues in the tri-state area, and two tours in Seoul, Korea. The energetic, soulful sound has brought YAZ BAND to the attention of Japanese TV and NY's smooth jazz radio station WQCD, CD 101.9.

The Hot Sardines were born when a guy and a girl met at an open vintage-jazz jam session advertised on Craigslist. Between two noodle shops on 49th Street, they discovered a mutual love for songs from the 1920s, '30s and '40s—salty stride tunes by Fats Waller, obscure foot-stompers by Louis Armstrong and his Hot Fives. The guy (Evan Palazzo) and the girl (Elizabeth Bougerol) found a few more kindred spirits—trumpeter Jason Prover, clarinetist/saxophonist Peter Anderson, drummer Justin Hines, and tap-dancer Eddy "The Kid" Francisco—and began creating a sound- hot jazz, Dixieland, and gutbucket blues, with vocals in English and French, invoking the sounds of a near-century ago, but resolutely in step with the current age. Recent appearances include the Manhattan Cocktail Classic, the Shanghai Mermaid, speakeasy parties, the Campbell Apartment at Grand Central, the Wit’s End jazz age salon, The Cupping Room, and at Lincoln Center’s Midsummer Night Swing for Bastille Day.