Jan 21, 2025 7:54 PM
Southern California Fires Hit the Jazz Community
Roy McCurdy and his wife had just finished eating dinner and were relaxing over coffee in their Altadena home, when he…
The Manhattan Transfer and Take 6 will hit the road together for a U.S. tour that begins Oct. 1 in Bangor, Maine.
(Photo: Courtesy of the artists)Vocal-jazz dynasties The Manhattan Transfer and Take 6 will join forces this October for “The Summit,” a collaborative national tour during which the two groups will perform nearly 50 shows across the United States.
Between them, The Manhattan Transfer and Take 6 boast a remarkable 20 Grammy Awards, and cover a range of popular styles from bebop to r&b, gospel to swing. This tour marks their first collaboration.
“It’s basically putting together these two groups that have listened to and been fans of each other for many years,” says Claude V. McKnight III, first tenor and founder of Take 6. “We’ll be doing some songs together, stripping some songs down, and doing different kinds of pairings, and just having a really good time onstage. This is something you can only do live.”
Since its inception in the early ’70s, The Manhattan Transfer, a vocal quartet, has released nearly 30 albums, and has been nominated for 20 Grammy awards, winning 10. The group was inducted into the Vocal Group Hall of Fame in 1998.
Take 6, an a cappella group, released its most recent album, Believe, in March 2016. The group has collaborated with a diverse range of artists, including Ella Fitzgerald, Ray Charles and Justin Timberlake.
The Manhattan Transfer and Take 6 kick off their tour Oct. 1 in Bangor, Maine, with subsequent stops in New England and across the country through March 2017.
On Jan. 21 the groups will headline the Charleston Jazz Festival in Charleston, South Carolina, where each group will perform a set individually before coming together for a combined finale.
For more information, visit manhattantransfer.net or take6.com.
Gerald and John Clayton at the family home in Altadena during a photo shoot for the June 2022 cover of DownBeat. The house was lost during the Los Angeles fires.
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