Harvey Diamond Quartet

egendary pianist Harvey Diamond returns to the Mandorla Music Series, where he’ll be joined by James Merenda on alto saxophone, Jon Dreyer on bass and Miki Matsuki on drums. 8pm, Sat 2/24 at Third Life Studio.

“Diamond is a musician’s musician with a penchant for honing gems from the Great American Songbook into personal statements that leave us yearning for more. Diamond will take a familiar melody, distill it into a basic sketch and then expand upon the song’s form by elaborating its harmony, melody and stylistic presentation. He does all this with a complete absence of pretension so that his interpretations are egoless reflections of where he is in the moment, presented through a lens of years of study and experience. Diamond is a master of both melody and harmony much like his predecessors in the legacy of jazz piano, Bill Evans and Lennie Tristano.”

—Eugene Uman, music director of the Vermont Jazz Center