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What do you get when you bring together four bandleaders with years of musical skill and history between them into one ensemble? A creative venture based on musicianship, friendship and expression — and a musical adventure, unfolding in real time on stage.
Together, pianist Tammy Hall, saxophonist Kristen Strom, bassist Ruth Davies and drummer Sylvia Cuenca are the Realtime Collective. The ensemble will perform April 4 in a show presented by Earthwise Productions at Mitchell Park Community Center. Jazz flutist Rabiah Kabir opens. The show is part of a spring lineup of shows presented by Earthwise at Palo Alto venues.
Individually, the members of Realtime Collective are likely well-known to area jazz fans, who may have seen them perform solo, with another ensemble or perhaps in a configuration with other members of the collective. All four musicians have long associations with the Stanford Jazz Festival, having performed as well as taught on the faculty. Davies has a longstanding blues night at the festival.Â
“Jazz is such music of the moment, and to see what we could create in real time — that was the thing behind it. Plus, we’re all contributing music to the program, it’s really the four of us deciding what we want to do and and how we want to do it,” Strom said of the ensemble’s name.
Although various members of the group have performed together at other times or have long histories of collaboration, the quartet has been performing as Realtime Collective for about four years.
“We all have equal say, and so there’s no ego-tripping there. We don’t have anything to prove, certainly to each other. We don’t have anything to prove in the milieu of jazz … This is a camaraderie. It’s a friendship, and it really is a creative relationship that we get to explore with each other,” Hall said of the group’s dynamic.
“So we get to expand and challenge each other in our ways of expression with this wonderful music and the real time part comes in when we are offering a song, and there’s always room for improvisation on an arrangement. But we want to take it a little further, so that not only is it improvisation, it could also become spontaneous composition — we could go out of the structure of the song and make something else that’s been inspired by the song,” she said.
The musicians’ longtime relationships with each other give their collaboration a strong foundation, with trust, support and an ability to deftly pivot to where the music takes them in performances.
“This is a real band. We’ve been playing together for a while, and are really going after a certain sound for the four of us. I really believe that’s different than if I just pick up three musicians who are all really good — that’ll be a different experience. Tammy and I have a super cool connection, and can — not the kind of cliche of reading each other’s minds, but we definitely flow in the same direction. And I’ve heard people say that that’s palpable. … We’re just creating music in the moment with joy and freedom,” Strom said.
Each musician may favor certain genres in her own writing and performing — for instance, Hall often draws on influences of jazz, gospel and classical while Davies works in blues — but together the group melds their styles into performances that include their original music, and pieces by other jazz and Latin composers.
“It’s all under the umbrella of jazz. We are all known ‘jazz’ musicians — and I put that in quotes — and that does inform how we express (ourselves), but it doesn’t restrict where we go with the music,” Hall said.
Realtime Collective’s April 4 concert will feature compositions by Strom, Hall and Cuenca, as well as Brazilian musicians and composers Tanya Maria, Eliane Elias and others. The program will also include a tune called “Frankie and Johnny” arranged to feature Davies.Â
“I think Tammy and I mostly present stuff to the group, but we’re doing a couple of Sylvia’s originals, and we take suggestions from the two of them about what we want to do, and we’re conscious of really featuring each person, because all the members are so strong — such strong musicians in her own right. There is one tune that we will play at the April 4 show, which is one that Tammy and I wrote together. It’s called, ‘Keep Your Head Up.’ It’s a song for these times,” Strom said.
“There’ll be some swinging stuff … there’ll be some blues, of course, which is foundational. And there’ll be music you will want to move to, and there will be music that you’ll want to maybe be a little contemplative about. The music itself is expressing the complexities of us,” Hall said.
Realtime Collective performs April 4, 8-10:30 p.m., at Mitchell Park Community Center, 3700 Middlefield Road, Palo Alto; $20; eventbrite.com.
