SJZ U19s

Steven Lugerner's SLUGish Ensemble appears at the SJZ Break Room to present their latest album, Urban Crawl, a tribute to the streets of San Francisco and a striking testament to the strength of the Bay Area jazz scene. Featuring new additions Colin Hogan and Ian McArdle, SLUGish changes shape, but never loses its deeply rooted San Franciscan charm. The director of educational and festival programming at the Stanford Jazz Workshop, Steven Lugerner has collaborated and recorded with many of jazz’s most celebrated and influential artists, including pianists Larry Willis, Fred Hersch, Taylor Eigsti and Myra Melford, drummers Tootie Heath, Allison Miller and Matt Wilson, soprano saxophonist Jane Ira Bloom, flutist Jamie Baum, and bassist John Hébert, just for starters. Urban Crawl, his third and latest studio album with SLUGish Ensemble, finds Lugerner in a meditative space, looking out at the world with wonder and gratitude. Patient and lapidary, the music seems to revel in San Francisco’s legendary beauty, eschewing the grit and squalor that has dominated headlines in recent years. Back with mostly the same cast of players, he responds to a different cityscape and state of mind on Urban Crawl, an arrestingly alluring set of original tunes. With Urban Crawl, he offers a bracing antidote to despair, angst and ennui.