Howe Cochran has been a mainstay of Monterey County’s musical community for decades. His string of bands here started with Firehouse Harris, and included the Interstate Blues Band and stints at Monterey Bay Blues Festival. Then there’s the 14-year run at Sly McFly’s in the jazz vocal trio Illuminati with Lee Durley and vocalist Eric Tomm and his participation in the Big Sur cult band Songs Hotbox Harry Taught Us.
That’s a lot of blues. Yet his latest project, Shades of Light with flautist Ellen Berrahmoun, reveals versatility. “I know he gravitates to the blues but he’s a highly accomplished jazz musician,” Berrahmoun says. “I’ve led him astray by introducing my passion for Brazilian music. So far he’s been a willing accomplice.”
Cochran explains things a little differently: “The way I put it is like this: Ellen was studying at the Berkelee School of Music in Boston one day and I went shopping across the street from the Peabody Conservatory. That was as close as I ever got to going to music school.”
Schooled or not, Cochran’s fluid licks and solid pedal steel riffs meld beautifully with Berrahmoun’s trained flute work.
Presented by Kiki Wow, the duo offers listeners an eclectic musical experience when they gig at Bay of Pines, with a set list ranging from jazz, blues and Brazilian standards to Beatles and Western swing.
Two days later, Wow will emcee Songwriters in the Round, which will feature three diversely talented singers.Wow found the players while attending a songwriter’s conference called Far West in Oakland. “Sometimes you just have a musical chemistry,” she says, herself is a singer/songwriter. It was Midyne Spear, formerly of Santa Cruz’s Birdz Uva Feather band, who first caught Wow’s ears. “She compares herself to Mary Chapin Carpenter and Joni Mitchell,” Wow says, “[and] those are high names to live up to. But I loved her CD.” Spear does classic country-inflected acoustic guitar and vocals, but she also plays an electric harp in a New Age style.
Also on the bill is New York City singer Sonya Heller, whose introspective romantic ramblings and wispy vocal style recall early Janis Ian sans the torment. The evening will conclude with Capitola’s Glenn MacPherson, a rocking Americana ace who prompts Wow to wax poetic. “Cover bands come and go but people who write their own music – to pen something in your own words is such a powerful expression,” the promoter says. “I don’t ever want to lose the art of that.”
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