Jazz night a fundraiser for Abbie Shelter

A New York-style jazz night will benefit a women’s crisis center in January.

Manhattan Jazz Night Out starts at 8 p.m. Jan. 5 at Crush Wine Bar in Whitefish. The concert will feature Richie Barshay on drums, bassist Don Caverly, Erica von Kleist on saxophone and flute and Miles Fortenberry on guitar.

Tickets are $30 each at the door and will benefit the Abbie Shelter.

Barshay, most noted for his work with the Herbie Hancock Quartet, has established himself as a prominent musical voice of his generation and is regarded as "a player to watch" by JazzTimes magazine. On tour and on recordings, his eclectic resume so far includes Herbie Hancock, Chick Corea, Esperanza Spalding, The Klezmatics, Fred Hersch, Kenny Werner, Lee Konitz, Natalie Merchant, David Krakauer, Fred Wesley, Claudia Acuña, Bobby McFerrin and Pete Seeger among others.

Since 2004, he has led outreach projects as an American Musical Envoy with the U.S. State Department in Asia, Africa, South America, and Europe. Barshay is based in New York City.

Von Kleist has begun to make her mark in the New York jazz scene as one of the most in-demand young musicians in the city, performing and recording with Wynton Marsalis, Chris Potter, Sean Jones, Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, DIVA and the Grammy-winning Afro-Latin Jazz Orchestra. While performing is her primary passion, von Kleist has proved herself a prolific and gifted composer.

Drawing upon influences such as Wayne Shorter, Duke Ellington, and Stevie Wonder, she has been commissioned to write for the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, The Juilliard School and the Afro- Latin Jazz Orchestra. Von Kleist is currently a member of Darcy James Argue’s Secret Society, as well as a regular orchestra member at “The Addams Family” on Broadway.

Caverly, a Montana native and prolific multi-instrumentalist, has been a fixture on the Flathead Valley music scene for several years, performing and teaching on drums, bass, guitar and piano. A graduate of the University of Idaho Lionel Hampton School of music, Caverly has studied with some of the world’s most prominent musicians, including Claudio Roditi, Russel Malone, Roy Hargrove, and John Clayton.

Caverly performs regularly with some of the area’s most prominent bands, including HumanLab, an award-winning group from Los Angeles, and Big Daddy and the Blue Notes.

Fortenberry studied at Montana State University in Bozeman and currently lives in New Orleans. He has played with the Jack Waller Quintet, which has a large local community following.

Fortenberry has been described by local fans as both a monster and an IQ genius on jazz guitar.

For more information, call the Abbie Shelter at 752-4735 or visit www.abbieshelter.org.