A touch of Thai, jazz-style

July 17 was Vince Guaraldi’s 98th birthday, and — since his first publicized gig was an April 1951 booking at San Francisco’s Cable Car Village, as a member of tenor saxman Chuck Travis’ quartet — this year marks the 75th anniversary of Vince’s professional career.

That was two excellent excuses for the sensational all-Guaraldi set presented Sunday evening, July 19, by pianist Jim Martinez’s Quartet, accompanied by his son, James Martinez, on guitar; Kerry Kashiwagi, on bass; and Scott Gordon, on drums.

 

Jim’s fondness for Guaraldi’s music became evident when his 1994 album — Good Grief! It’s Jim Martinez, complete with a cover image of Snoopy pounding the ivories — included a sassy cover of “Linus and Lucy.” He upped the ante with his 2004 holiday release, A Jim Martinez Jazzy Christmas, which included covers of numerous Guaraldi originals and arrangements from his soundtrack to A Charlie Brown Christmas. Jim and I got to know each other shortly thereafter, and quickly became fast friends (which shouldn’t surprise anybody).

 

One of our most treasured memories came on the evening of June 30, 2012, when I arranged for him to play piano in a quartet that included former Guaraldi sidemen Eddie Duran (guitar), Dean Reilly (bass) and Colin Bailey (drums), during a private concert for the Peanuts Collectors Club. (Full details are here.) Another high point came three years later — August 15, 2015 — when Martinez was joined by bassist Brian Clark and drummer Tim Metz, for a 50th anniversary concert re-enactment of Guaraldi’s Jazz Mass, at San Francisco’s Grace Cathedral, the venue where it debuted back on May 21, 1965. (Full details of that magnificent day can be read here.)

 

Jim and I have collaborated many times since then, and many times Constant Companion and I have simply reveled in watching him perform, either as a soloist or with a combo.

 

Even by those aforementioned previous events, Jim was on fire Sunday evening.

 

But before getting to that, the venue deserves special mention: Twin Lotus Thai, a darling little restaurant plunked to one side of an unassuming shopping center in Sacramento’s College Glen neighborhood, just east of Sacramento State University. It opened in 2022 as a dream project by veteran jazz pianist Joe Gilman and his wife, Kai. Gilman’s four-decade career teaching jazz studies — at Sacramento State, American River College and University of the Pacific’s Brubeck Institute — occasionally was interrupted by tours with vibraphonist Bobby Hutcherson, and as part of the Kennedy Center/USIA Jazz Ambassador Program. Call all of that his day job; the restaurant became his nighttime side hustle.

Jim and Joe — the latter a couple years older — have known each other since both took classical piano lessons from Yuriy Oliynyk, before they were teenagers.