When a bass legend who's anchored Stan Getz, Jim Hall, and Chet Baker meets Asheville's most intimate jazz room, magic happens. Steve LaSpina brings four decades of New York City jazz mastery to Little Jumbo, joined by drummer Alan Hall (whose sticks have danced behind Lee Konitz across three continents), guitarist Dr. Tim Fischer (where USC precision meets street-level groove), and pianist Dr. Bill Bares (Harvard professor turned piano poet).
This Labor Day evening promises the kind of musical conversation that only happens when four lifetimes of jazz experience converge in one room. At Little Jumbo Bar, where the walls lean in when real musicians take the stage, prepare for bass lines that connect Texas dance halls to Manhattan's most hallowed stages, all wrapped in the intimate atmosphere that makes every note feel like a personal revelation.
Some musical conversations are worth four decades in the making.
Featuring
Born in the dance band DNA of Wichita Falls, Texas, Steve LaSpina transformed family musical heritage into a New York City bass legacy that spans four decades and reads like a who's who of jazz history. From Chicago's South Side clubs to Manhattan's most prestigious stages, LaSpina's upright and electric bass have provided the rhythmic backbone for legends including Stan Getz, Jim Hall, Mel Lewis, and Chet Baker. This is bass playing as musical archaeology, where every walking line connects...
Dr. Tim Fischer exists in that rarified space where USC doctoral precision meets street-level groove, where European touring experience fuses with American jazz DNA to create something entirely his own. This guitarist-composer-educator doesn't just play jazz fusion—he reimagines what happens when classical technique meets electronic experimentation, when rock energy collides with bebop sophistication. From Los Angeles studios to St. Louis classrooms to his current faculty position at Coastal...
From Nebraska to Harvard to Little Jumbo, Dr. Bill Bares embodies the scholarly soul of jazz—a NEH Distinguished Professor whose academic credentials from Amherst College read like a jazz education manifesto written in political science and piano poetry. When a lip injury ended his All-American trumpet dreams, Bares discovered that sometimes life's detours lead to destinations you never knew you were seeking. Now directing jazz studies at UNC Asheville after teaching stints at Harvard, Brown,...
Before Alan Hall played his first drum lesson, he played concerts. He and his sister would turn on the radio and perform for the neighborhood kids in San Jose — no instruments, no training, just the instinct that sound was meant to be shared and that sharing it required an audience. His mother was a pianist who sang and taught. His grandparents were Spanish dancers on the vaudeville circuit. His father's father wrote pop songs. The family had been in the business of moving people's bodies for...
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