Article Contributed by Jazz Promo Services
Published on 2026-03-14
The Vermont Jazz Center will present its esteemed bass faculty member, Cameron Brown, in two performance settings on March 21, 2026 at its Cotton Mill Hill Venue. This is a benefit concert, all net proceeds will go directly to the Windham County Heat Fund. For the last 21 years the Heat Fund has raised over one million dollars and aided over 2000 families. The funds generated from this concert will directly provide emergency funds to the Heat Fund during this especially frigid winter.
This VJC concert honors bassist Cameron Brown who turned 80 in December. Brown is a living legend who has played and recorded with a who’s who in the jazz world since the mid-1960s. He is also a dedicated member of the Vermont Jazz Center community, having taught at the Summer Jazz Workshop for almost two decades. For this concert, Brown will be heard in two settings, the first as a duo with pianist, Harvey Diamond. The second is with his New York quintet, “Dannie’s Calypso”, a project whose music reflects the freedom and white-hot grooves of some of Brown’s former employers like Don Cherry, Dewey Redman, Don Pullen & George Adams, Art Blakey, and Dannie Richmond.
The piano and bass duo came together when pianist Diamond was asked to perform in April 2016 at Mezzrow, a piano-centric bar in New York’s West Village. Diamond called Brown to join him, and, as the saying goes, “the rest is history.” To date, the two faculty members of the VJC’s Summer Jazz Workshop have played this celebrated venue a total of 15 times. Their sympatico is palpable; Brown has an uncanny ability to hear and follow the spontaneous nuances of Diamond’s extraordinarily rich harmonic palate. They now have released two duo recordings thanks to the sponsorship of a generous patron from the Summer Workshop community.
The second set of the evening will feature a band that Cameron Brown organized to perform music that was inspired by his time in the bands of trumpeter Don Cherry and drummer Dannie Richmond. Dannie’s Calypso demonstrates the breadth of Brown’s prolific history, embracing bebop, swing, tightly scripted melodies, and even free jazz. Dannie’s Calypso reflects Brown’s musical choices and also aligns with his way of life. One encounters a sincere commitment to integrity, respect for the jazz lineage, and a belief that creativity is our human birthright. Similar to Ornette Coleman’s landmark groups, Dannie’s Calypso is chord-less (without piano or guitar). This gives the band members the freedom to improvise in an open environment where they are less restrained by the strict harmonic confines laid out by chordal players. The instrumentation of Dannie’s Calypso consists of a three-horn frontline (two saxophonists and one trumpeter), plus drums, and the leader on bass.
In a recent interview with Cameron Brown, I asked him about the origin of the group’s name and how he would describe their music. The band’s name, Dannie’s Calypso, refers to a composition by the drummer Dannie Richmond called “Soft Seas.” Brown chose to memorialize his 10-year tenure with Richmond, pianist Don Pullen and saxophonist George Adams. These three celebrated musicians were alumni of the Charles Mingus Quintet of the 1970s – Richmond for 21 years, Pullen for two years and Adams for three. The original quartet of these four luminaries, plus Cameron Brown on bass, stood on the shoulders of Mingus’s legacy, but in reality, they had already moved on and created their own milieu. The magazine Jazz Times recognized their significance, “During the decade it lasted, from 1979 to 1989, the quartet was among the best working bands of its time. [George] Adams on tenor sax, flute, and vocals; [Don] Pullen on piano; Cameron Brown on bass; Dannie Richmond on drums. No group, then or now, so compellingly bridged the gap between avant-garde abandon and gutbucket groove. Everyone who heard this combustible quartet in the flesh says the same thing: Even the group’s best records fail to capture the authority, intensity, physicality, rapture, and humor with which this foursome commanded a room.”
According to Brown, after Mingus passed away in 1979 (due to ALS) “there was a very resourceful agent in Holland who reached out to the sax/piano duo of George Adams and Don Pullen and asked them if they’d like to form a quartet.” Brown went on, “I remember where I was sitting in August of ‘79 when I got that phone call from Don [pianist Don Pullen]. Don wanted me in the band because he felt like I could bridge the gap between the more free, avant garde stuff, which is what he really wanted to do, and the more straight-ahead way that George and Dannie would want to go. And I could do both of those things. He wanted me to be the bass player. And somehow, I knew at that moment that my life had changed forever. I had no way of knowing that the band would last for 10 years, be extremely popular and do two or three European tours a year, a Japanese tour every year and a half… Go out to the West Coast, go here, go there. I mean, do gigs in the States, be at the Village Vanguard three or four weeks a year. You know, that band was just on fire…and I want Dannie [drummer and composer of “Soft Seas”] to be remembered. That’s where the name of the band comes from.”
Two other critical sources of inspiration for Cameron Brown are trumpeters Miles Davis and Don Cherry. In our conversation Brown confessed – “I always say that Miles Davis is responsible for the predicament which I find myself.” He talked about the life-changing experience of hearing Miles Davis in-person as a 16 year-old in Detroit in 1961 with Hank Mobley, Wynton Kelly, Paul Chambers, and Jimmy Cobb: “When I was able to hear Miles in all his intensity and passion, up close like that, not in a concert hall, but in a little club – that had a profound, positive effect on me because I really fell in love with the music. I would go home. I would listen over and over again to Milestones and Kind of Blue…I really think that’s how I got to be however good as I am. Just because I immersed myself in and understood how important the rhythm section was and, you know, what the swing was.”
Brown was able to personally connect with the intense feeling he got hearing Miles when he joined Don Cherry’s band for a 10-day stint at the Montmartre in Copenhagen in March in 1966. Cherry is best known for his work with Ornette Coleman in the early 1960s. He was also a captivating leader whose music was defined by an almost supernatural spirit. Brown said that when forming the band Dannie’s Calypso, his goal was to gain access to the energy he felt while making music in Cherry’s band. He said that “meeting Don and playing his music changed my life forever…I could actually have a friend and play with somebody who had that same intensity, focus, and energy as Miles.”
On March 21st, 2026 listeners will have the opportunity to hear Cameron Brown in two separate contexts:
Harvey Diamond/Cameron Brown Duo
Pianist Harvey Diamond and Cameron met at the Vermont Jazz Center’s Summer Jazz Workshop where they both served as teachers and accompanied the singers who were studying with Sheila Jordan and Jay Clayton. On a website built for him, Harvey Diamond has been described as “one of the unsung heroes of the Boston jazz scene since the mid-1960s.” In the 1970s, he was one of Lennie Tristano’s last students. Harvey has performed at Ryles Jazz Club, the Acton Jazz Café, the Regatta Bar, and many other venues; he has been a guest on WGBH Radio’s “Eric in the Evening” program with Eric Jackson. NEA Jazz Master Sheila Jordan stated “Harvey Diamond is a fantastic pianist. He plays from his heart and totally disappears into the song. He’s a real joy to sing with.” Trumpeter Jason Palmer agrees: “Diamond is a national treasure…When he plays I hear a light, buoyant artist who exudes joy in every phrase that he plays.”
Dannie’s Calypso:
Dave Ballou (trumpet)
Ballou first joined with Cameron Brown in 1997 on a Brussels-based recording project for Halo Records that included NEA Jazz Master Sheila Jordan with guest artist Dewey Redman. He has performed and/or recorded with a wide range of artists including Gunther Schuller, Andrew Hill, Oliver Lake, Woody Herman, Steely Dan, David Sanford, John Hollenbeck, Wadada Leo Smith, Joe Lovano, Rabih Abou Khalil, Joe Maneri, Dewey Redman, and Billy Hart. Ballou is a Professor of Music at Towson University.
Tony Jefferson (drums)
A fixture on the New York jazz scene, Jefferson placed third in the Thelonious Monk Competition in 1992. He has performed and recorded with Eddie Harris, Kenny Drew Jr., Lonnie Smith, Eddie Henderson, Lou Donaldson, Frank Wess, Don Friedman, Cyrus Chestnut, Mark Whitfield, Jerry Bergonzi, Joey Calderazzo, Freddy Cole, Hank Jones, Benny Golson, Cedar Walton, Vic Juris, Charles McPherson, John Abercrombie and many others. In talking about Tony Jefferson, Cameron Brown said “Tony is just a guy who lives close to me…We just kept playing together and playing together and playing together, and I really loved him. So he’s my drummer.”
Lisa Parrott (saxophones)
Born in Australia, Parrott moved to New York City to become immersed in the jazz scene in 1993. She received a 2024 Chamber Music America New Jazz Works grant to compose for her septet, We Love Ornette. When asked how she came to join the band, Brown said “I was on a little gig in the Village, a late night thing, and she came and sat in. I just dug her sound and asked her to join the band.” Parrott has been recognized in DownBeat’s Critics and Readers Polls since 2013. She has performed in all 50 U.S. states and played in numerous large ensembles including the New York Pops, the Artie Shaw Orchestra, Jimmy Heath’s Big Band, Marty Ehrlich’s Large Ensemble and the Diva Jazz Orchestra, where she held the baritone sax chair from 1998 to 2015. Other performance credits include Dave Brubeck, Nancy Wilson, Johnny Mandel, Cindy Blackman, Gunther Schuller, Marty Ehrlich, and Allison Miller.
Jason Rigby (tenor saxophone)
Born on a U.S. Naval base in Japan and raised in a musical family, Rigby’s path was set the moment he first heard Coleman Hawkins’ Body and Soul on the radio at age ten. Now based in New York City, Rigby has performed with the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra, Eivind Opsvik, Kris Davis, John Patitucci, and Billy Hart among many others. He appears on recordings with Mike Holober, Oranjjoolius, Fumi Tomita, John Irabagon, Mark Guiliana, and many others.
When reminiscing about his travels with Dannie Richmond, Don Pullen and George Adams, Brown said that in the decade that they had toured together they had averaged 180 gigs a year. “The energy was off the graph compared to anything I’d ever been a part of – the intensity was incredible. It was like graduate school to be in a rhythm section with Don and Dannie.” Sadly, none of the other members of that quartet made it to 55 years of age. “They lived so hard, it’s as if they lived two days each and every day.” Brown finished up our conversation saying. “I want Dannie to be remembered. That’s where the name of the band comes from.”
Come to the Jazz Center on March 21st, enjoy the music and know that each dollar spent on ticket purchases will go directly towards fuel assistance for our neighbors in need. Due to the generous sponsorship of this concert by the Baker sisters (Eve, Susanna and Alisa), the net proceeds of this concert will be contributed directly to the Windham County Heat Fund. For 21 years the Heat Fund has been run by volunteers, accepting no salaries and paying for overhead out of their own pockets. The VJC appreciates the support of the Vermont Arts Council, and media support from The Commons and The Brattleboro Reformer.
This concert will be held in honor of Eve Baker.
Be sure to mark Saturday, March 21st, 2026 on your calendar. Admission is $25+ general admission (sliding scale). Tickets can be reserved online at www.vtjazz.org, or by phone 802 254 9088 x1. Handicapped access is available by emailing or calling to schedule a time for one of our staff to meet your party.
