photo of James Washington by John Hill
James Washington, solo piano
At the Cadillac Hotel | 380 Eddy St. SF, CA 94102
Friday April 26, 2024 | 1:00 - 2:00pm
Free! All welcome! No registration required!
Pianist James Washington performs a set of jazz standards and improvisations for a special Concert at the Cadillac, presented in collaboration with the Tenderloin Museum as a Sounds of the Tenderloin live music program.
Sounds of the Tenderloin & the Concerts at the Cadillac series come together again to produce a performance by James Washington, a talented pianist influenced by classical music and jazz who wields a quiet virtuosity with both standards and improvisations.
A lifelong musician, Washington started working at a young age as a ballet accompanist in New Jersey, Boston, New York, and eventually San Francisco. All the while, he was adjacent to the world of jazz, which increasingly informed his musical practice. He developed a playing style with a rich harmonic vocabulary and complex structure that is clear and soulful. His phrasings and touch are limber, as if learned from a dancer. Over the years, Washington has been heard by thousands in San Francisco in clubs, cafes, churches, and hospitals both as a solo performer and in combos. A longtime Tenderloin resident, Washington will share a set of solo music on the grand piano in the heart of the neighborhood–the lobby of the historic Cadillac Hotel on Friday, April 26th in concert with this year’s “I Love Tenderloin Week.”
Concerts at the Cadillac is a free concert series open to the public that, since 2007, has provided high-quality music for the residents of the Cadillac Hotel and San Francisco's Tenderloin District. The Tenderloin Museum honors the longevity and resilience of this unique series by co-presenting select concerts that animate the neighborhood’s undersung cultural history through live music, the mission of TLM’s ongoing Sounds of the Tenderloin series of public programs. These monthly Friday afternoon performances bring live music to the Cadillac’s spacious lobby, which hints at the grandeur of the historic building when it was constructed in 1907 and now features the Patricia Walkup Memorial Piano, a meticulously restored 1884 Steinway Model D concert grand piano. Focused on jazz, Latin, and classical, the Concerts at the Cadillac’s programming features local, working musicians steeped in an instrumental or vocal practice, brings live music into the home of Tenderloin residents, and is “dedicated to the power of great music to uplift and inspire.” Many of the performances have been documented with high quality audio and video, creating a vast archive of full length concert videos that reveals the hotel’s dedication to its live music program and traces a loose network of the city’s most talented musicians and ensembles, many of whom have returned to perform for the series multiple times.
Funding for this Sounds of the Tenderloin live music program is provided by Specified General Fund for the Museum Grant Program under the California Cultural and Historical Endowment.
