Arts Listings

When Oakland-based jazz trumpeter Ian Carey was about 14 years old, he experienced something of a revelation. While he was growing up in upstate New York, his family attended church regularly, all singing in the choir. But when they moved back to Folsom, Calif., just east of Sacramento, Carey’s father searched the area in vain for a suitable church with a strong choir. Churches were plenty but choirs were not, and when he couldn’t find one he liked the family’s church-going days were over.  

“I had always thought that we were a religious family,” Carey says, “but once we got to California I found out we were really a musical family.” 

Thus one muse was replaced with another and a life-long obsession was born. 

The Ian Carey Quintet, made up of several Bay Area jazz scene stalwarts, will venture to the East Bay for the first time for a performance this Thursday, from 8 to 11 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island in downtown Berkeley. The band consists of Carey on trumpet and flugelhorn, Adam Schulman on piano, Fred Randolph on bass, Jon Arkin on drums, and Joe Cohen sitting in for Evan Francis on saxophone. The group has drawn praise from notable critics, including Bill Kirchner, editor of the Oxford Companion to Jazz and the Miles Davis Reader, who describes Carey as “a gifted young composer who asks deep musical questions and comes up with compelling answers.” 

The artistic pedigree runs through both sides of the family. Carey’s mother was a designer and illustrator, his father a classical vocalist and jazz aficionado who filled the house with the groundbreaking sounds of Miles Davis and other jazz greats from an extensive record collection.  

When it came time for Ian to pick up an instrument and try out for the school band his grandmother suggested the French horn, reasoning that the rarity of the choice would essentially guarantee him a spot in the band. But landing a spot proved easy enough, as Carey soon picked up a trumpet and found that he had a natural ability to hit the difficult high notes.  

The school’s big band experience may have shaped his early development, but Carey’s interests later gravitated back to the music of his father’s old records, to small band music and the beauty and intricacy of improvisation. Sacramento had a small but thriving jazz scene at the time, and the under-aged Carey and his friends spent many hours sipping ginger ales in the city’s night spots, listening to local musicians such as Tom Peron. After high school Carey spent a couple of years studying classical trumpet at the University of Nevada before he enrolled in New York’s New School, where he studied jazz and contemporary music while getting an intoxicating dose of the romance of the lifestyle, hobnobbing in local clubs with luminaries like Dave Douglas and taking part in roof-top jam sessions overlooking Manhattan.  

Upon graduation Carey financed his music by working as a proofreader at a law firm while struggling to make a dent in the city’s jazz scene, a cut-throat environment where up-and-comers aren’t always made to feel welcome. After four years of struggling to make a living while maintaining his passion for jazz, the pleasures were wearing thin.  

So when an offer of a three-month sublet in San Francisco materialized in the summer of 2001, Carey eagerly seized the opportunity for a temporary change of locale and a chance to check out the Bay Area jazz scene. It didn’t take long to decide to make the move permanent.  

“It’s a much more cooperative, more supportive scene in the Bay Area,” Carey says. “It’s more laid back and welcoming.”  

As if to punctuate his growing disenchantment with his life in New York, 9/11 replaced the figurative dark cloud hanging over Carey’s life in the city with a literal one. He returned in October of 2001 to settle his affairs before moving back to California for good.  

In San Francisco he formed his own quintet and soon landed a regular gig at the House of Shields on Montgomery Street. The high ceilings did little for the acoustics and the crowd wasn’t necessarily a jazz crowd, but the twice-a-month sessions gave the nascent group the chance to venture beyond standards and to push ahead with Carey’s own compositions, several of which found their way onto the quintet’s first album, Sink/Swim.  

The album has the feel of the late 1950s recordings of Miles Davis and Art Farmer, blending elements of hard bop and cool jazz while leaning toward gentler, more lyrical tones. Rick Ballard, proprietor of Groove Yard, an Oakland record shop that specializes in jazz and does its part to promote local talent, says the influence of Davis as well as Chet Baker is apparent, but that Carey is “closer to Farmer in that he often plays flugelhorn as well,” coaxing innovative improvisations out of that instrument’s darker tones. “He’s a promising, young, lyrical player,” says Ballard.  

The House of Shields gig eventually came to an end though, as the venue’s owners decided to end their flirtations with jazz and revert to booking rock bands and DJs. “It was a great experience,” says Carey, but the ending was not entirely undesired. “It’s not easy playing to a crowd of drunken bike messengers.” 

Thursday’s performance will likely feature a broad sampling of the quintet’s repertoire. “We’ll be playing music from our album, as well as new originals by members of the group and some jazz rarities,” Carey says. Jazz fans will get another chance to catch Carey in action the following night as well, when he and Schulman and Randolph will perform as a trio from 7-10 p.m. Friday night at the Parc 55 Hotel in downtown San Francisco.  

THE IAN CAREY QUINTET 

8-11 p.m. Thursday at Anna’s Jazz Island. $8. 2120 Allston Way. 841-JAZZ. www.annasjazzisland.com.  

Sink/Swim can be purchased for $13 through iancareyjazz.com or at the Groove Yard, or for $10 at the show.  

The Groove Yard: 5555 Claremont Ave., Oakland. 655-87400. To sign up for Rick Ballard's jazz newsletter, e-mail groove2@earthlink.net. 

Ian Carey, Adam Shulman and Fred Randolph will also perform as a trio from 7-10 p.m. Friday at the Parc 55 Hotel, 55 Cyril Magnin St., San Francisco. (415) 392-8000. No cover. 

Photograph by Michael Beller 

Ian Carey and his band will perform Thursday night at Anna’s Jazz Island in Berkeley.