Before founding the Potomac Jazz Project, bass player Stan Hamrick had been performing around D.C. and the metro area with a number of groups, noting that with so many great players in town, he had the opportunity to learn from the best.
If you go
Potomac Jazz Project Quartet
Where: Sala Thai U Street, 1301 U St. NW
When: 8 to 11 p.m. Friday
Info: salathaidc.com
Potomac Jazz Project Trio with soloist Lena Seikaly
Where: Extra Virgin Italian Restaurant, 4053 Campbell Ave., Arlington
When: 7:30 to 11:30 p.m. Saturday
Info: extravirginva.com
Both venues are supper clubs with no cover charge to enjoy the music.
Jazz, while always a passion was not a career for him until 2008, when as a lawyer, he sold his practice preparing candidates for the bar exam and reinvented himself. “I’ve made my love my career now,” he said. “And it’s been very good. This week, we’re playing five nights in a row.”
Fans of the Potomac Jazz Project, a quartet featuring Hamrick on bass, Tim Ford at the piano, Steve Wolfe playing saxophone and Chuck Ferrell at the drums, can catch their act Friday at Sala Thai U Street.
“I want to make sure our jazz repertoire is as broad as possible,” Hamrick, who studied for two years at the University of Maryland’s jazz department and then trained privately at George Mason University, said. “We play a lot of Duke Ellington, Pat Metheny and even some Beatles music that I’ve arranged for the quartet.”
In addition to the Ellington standards Friday, the group, along with a guitarist, will perform Frank Sinatra and some Herbie Hancock.
“There’s Hancock’s “Watermelon Man” which is kind of funky and “Dolphin Dance,” which is more modern,” he said. “By the third set, we’ll play from the Pat Metheny songbook, which is aggressive and fun, and the Beatles’ ‘Eleanor Rigby’ and ‘Norwegian Wood.’ The entertainment gets increasingly intense and fun as the night goes on.”
The Project will shift gears on Saturday and work as a trio with bass, piano, drums and featured soloist, Washington’s own Lena Seikaly, as they make one of their regular appearances at Extra Virgin Italian Restaurant in Shirlington Village.
“I’ve been a vocalist in D.C. since I was 17,” Seikaly, who has held residencies at both the Kennedy Center and Strathmore, said. “I was trained in opera, but jazz is where my passion lies [and] what I pursued almost exclusively after college.”
Thrilled to have the weekly gig at Extra Virgin, Seiklay will perform the songs of Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald and Sarah Vaughn.
“People all over Arlington know about us and our live music tradition,” she continued. “It’s the highest art form I can think of.”
