by Giovanni Russonello
Editorial board

The holidays are over, and it’s back to work. But every once in a while, something comes along to make you forget all that, and throws you unexpectedly back into a reveling state. For just a few hours this Sunday, at the D.C. Jazz Loft at Chez Billy, there will be plenty of amazing music to lose yourself in. Three of the District’s most swinging horn players will lead bands: the stalwart saxophonist Tedd Baker, the zinging trumpeter John Williams, and Joseph Howell, the sleeper pick on clarinet, who just arrived in D.C. a few months ago and has been dropping jaws with his lighting-quick solos ever since.

 
Chez Billy, which hosted one of our most happenin’ jazz lofts in recent memory this past November, is located at 3815 Georgia Ave. NW, just across the street from the Petworth Metro stop. The full menu and drink offerings are out of sight. As usual, we suggest a $15 donation to the musicians, but no one will be turned away if they can’t give that much. Don’t miss out on these amazing hometown talents.

TEDD BAKER

The saxophonist Tedd Baker, one of the most revered on the D.C. scene, has toured the world as part of the State Department’s Jazz Ambassadors program and is a member of the U.S. Air Force jazz band, the Airmen of Note. But when he steps in front of his own combo, Baker’s liable to bring the house down; he has a broad, powerful tone and a sure-footed improvisational attack that winds and zags. It’s confident and questioning, all at once.

JS WILLIAMS

In JS Williams’ bright trumpet tone and quick, keen phrasing, you’ll find a hint of that wellspring of joy that made Clifford Brown a legend on the instrument. But Williams, a native New Yorker now residing in D.C., has absorbed plenty of other influences since Brown’s heyday in the 1950s; there’s funk, soul and rock in his playing, and in his quartet he puts it all to use in service of a danceable, rousing group sound.

(Williams is the trumpeter on the far left)

JOSEPH HOWELL

Justifying the dogmatic newness of improvisation against an ingrained reverence for tradition can be tough for any musician. But for a guy who plays the clarinet, an instrument seemingly shackled to the swing era, and who likes to play straight-ahead music in small groups? Seems like a crippling proposition. Joseph Howell’s got the chops, though, and the appetite for risk to make energizing music with little mind to pretense. A newcomer to the D.C. area, the clarinetist has a Doctorate of Musical Arts from the New Englad Conservatory — but when he gets onstage and lets fly a zipping improvisation, his chops are all you notice.

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Photo on flyer of U Street Metro station courtesy vpickering/flickr.

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