Rubisa Patrol Revisited With Mark Isham
A Denver Jazz Fest Pre-Festival Event
Presented by Denver Jazz and
The Gift of Jazz
Art Lande (piano)
Mark Isham (flugelhorn, soprano sax)
Bruce Williamson (saxophones)
Shane Endsley (trumpet)
Gonzalo Teppa (bass)
Dru Heller (drums)
Art Lande's band Rubisa Patrol made 2 albums for ECM. That music is cherished by many and will be featured as a not-to-be-missed, Pre-Festival Event for the not-to-be-missed, inaugural Denver Jazz Fest to be held in April of 2025.
That might be a lot to process, but do it quickly then book your tickets for Rubisa Patrol Revisited at Dazzle and check into Denver Jazz Fest, and The Gift of Jazz for more outstanding music events happening in the Denver/Front Range area.
1080 14th Street (map)
Denver, CO 80202
Doors open at 5:30 pm, music starts at 6:30 pm
Admission: $20/$30/$35
Ensure your seat, get your tickets now ...
Rubisa Patrol Retrospective
When I returned to the Bay Area after six months in Europe, touring Scandinavia with Ted Curson and concluding my first ECM recording "Red Lanta" with Jan Garbarek, I started a new band. December 1973 was the first rehearsal (always a weekly event). I called the group "Rubisa Patrol" because of a dream sequence I saw in a Werner Herzog film where a blind man let a group of vagrants through the desert using his instincts to decide the direction to go. I didn’t feel like I really knew how to proceed and my ideas were followed -- or not (I was called the "figurehead"). So we worked as a team, improvising, composing, learning how we wanted to make music together and develop our friendships and our sense of self (I was 26, Isham was younger).
The group was a quartet the first few years -- Mark Isham (trumpet), Bill Douglass (bass), Glenn Cronkite (drums), Art Lande (piano) -- as heard on the two ECM recordings, then expanded to a quintet with multi-reed man Bruce Williamson. The group lasted through 1979 when I moved to Seattle and other members moved to LA. Rubisa played regularly at the great American Music Hall in San Francisco, along with many other venues in California as well as touring all over Europe and gigs in New York and Florida. The Rubisas played at jazz festivals in LA, La Jolla, Berkeley, Hamburg, Norway, and Spain. The influences of modern jazz, electronic music, Middle Eastern and other world music, classical, and “free jazz“ were given free rein. Finally, a group sound and identity emerged -- a wild, sweet, intense, unpredictable yet clear, controlled chaos.
The concert on Tuesday, November 26, at Dazzle, will be a Rubisa Patrol retrospective. All the music will be from the repertoire of the band – originals by band members and arrangements of jazz tunes.
Mark Isham (flugelhorn and soprano sax) is a charter member of the band and played on both ECM recordings. He has had a very successful career writing music for Film, and lives in California. Bruce Williamson and Mark Miller (reeds) both were part of the group in the 70s. Dru Heller (drums) and Gonzalo Teppa (bass) are current members of the trio "Flex." Shane Endsley (trumpet) is an amazing improviser and is well known in Denver and internationally as a founding member of Kneebody. I have collaborated with Shane often over many years (Russian Dragon Band).
I know we can bring the Rubisa music to life and share it with passion and new ideas. Please don’t miss this concert – we look forward to playing for you.
-- Art Lande.