Jack Wilkins' Tenor Conclave
The name nods to a 1957 Prestige date that put Coltrane, Mobley, Zoot Sims and Al Cohn in a room together and let the tenors work out their differences in real time. Jack Wilkins revives the premise for a Monday night in Asheville, trading horns with fellow tenor Dylan Hannan over a rhythm section that has no business being this deep for a free show on Broadway.
Wilkins is the Director of Jazz Studies at the University of South Florida and a saxophonist whose career has carried him from the Canadian Rockies to Swedish jazz clubs to Grammy-nominated orchestral sessions. Hannan, a Florida-raised multi-reedist, plays saxophone, clarinet and flute with the quiet discipline of someone who studied composition on the side and never stopped listening like a composer. Put two tenors across from each other and something interesting almost always happens, the conversation shifting from harmony to rhetoric, each player's phrasing sharpening against the other's.
The rhythm section is a small event of its own. Andy Page on guitar and his twin brother Zack Page on bass have been playing together since their father handed them their instruments on their twelfth Christmas, which is to say they hear each other in a way that takes most musicians decades to approximate. Justin Watt, a veteran of the Glenn Miller Orchestra and a fixture of the Asheville scene, holds it all down from the kit.
Featuring
Jack Wilkins transforms tenor saxophone into a compass for musical exploration, his horn pointing toward everything from the Canadian Rockies to the Appalachian ridgelines, from Swedish jazz clubs to Grammy-nominated orchestral suites. As Director of Jazz Studies at the University of South Florida, Wilkins has built a career on proving that the most compelling music happens when you're brave enough to let geography shape your sound—whether that's drawing inspiration from Banff Centre artist...
Dylan Hannan transforms reed instruments into musical passports, his saxophone, clarinet, and flute carrying stories from middle school jazz band revelations to concert halls across 18 states and four Canadian provinces. This east coast Florida native discovered his calling in a school jazz ensemble, then spent his University of Central Florida years expanding his musical vocabulary—mastering jazz studies while secretly studying theory and composition on piano, proving that the best wind...
Nestled in the Blue Ridge Mountains, Andy Page has become a cornerstone of Boone's vibrant music scene as a senior lecturer of jazz guitar at Appalachian State University's Hayes School of Music. For over two decades, this versatile virtuoso has woven his guitar strings through the fabric of the High Country's musical landscape, transforming local venues into stages of sonic storytelling. Together with his twin brother Zack, Andy has been known to arrive at open jams and parties, captivating...
On their twelfth Christmas, Pete Page gave one son a guitar and the other a bass. The old man loved Booker T. & the M.G.'s and worshipped Duck Dunn, and he had a theory that every good band needs a good bass man. He wasn't wrong. Andy got the guitar. Zack — four minutes younger, identical in face, opposite in instrument — got the bass. Their mother came from the McGhees of Pilot Mountain, North Carolina, a family whose old-time music roots run back generations through the Appalachian soil....
Justin Watt embodies the rare breed of drummer who's equally at home anchoring a world-famous big band or exploring intimate trio conversations in Asheville's vibrant jazz scene. This Ohio native transformed childhood percussion lessons into a musical passport that took him from Kent State and Youngstown State master's programs to a two-year stint behind the kit with the legendary Glenn Miller Orchestra, touring stages across the United States, Japan, and Canada.
Since settling in...