Kurt Ribak (pronounced REE-bok, like the shoes) - bassist

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Online Press Kit

Press Release - Yoshi's San Francisco June 30 2009 concert
EPK (Electronic Press Kit)  bio    profile by KCSM-FM announcer Michael Burman     musical styles and influences     reviews    photo     mp3s    Kurt Ribak Trio Myspace site

Video interview of Kurt Ribak

This video interview was made by Lincoln Adler - www.LincolnAdler.com. Lincoln plays with me fairly often and is the saxophonist of Times 4, the jazz-funk group Greg Sankovich also plays in.

Kurt Ribak Trio Merchandise

 

THE NEW KURT RIBAK TRIO CD "gone" IS NOW OUT
The third Kurt Ribak Trio CD, "gone," is out.  A track has already been played repeatedly on KCSM-FM.  You can get the CD from me on gigs, at CDBaby, at The Groove Yard in Oakland at 5555 Claremont.  It is also available for download. 

East Bay Express Review:
There was a review of the CD in the "Local Licks" column of the East Bay Express. 

DEBUT CD BACK IN PRINT
The self-titled "Kurt Ribak Trio" CD, the one with three fingers on the cover, is back in print and can be bought direct from us, from CDBaby.com and from The Groove Yard, 5555 Claremont Avenue Oakland, CA 94618, and at Down Home Music, 10341 San Pablo Avenue, El Cerrito, CA.

CD sales in Japan
Disk Union licensed the track "Prima," from the "more" CD by the Kurt Ribak Trio.   We are included in the "Jazz Bar 2008" recording, a compilation of recent jazz recordings.  The track "Pseudoafrocubanismo" from our debut CD ("Kurt Ribak Trio" - three fingers cover) was included in "Jazz Bar 2007," which has been selling well in Japan. 

Our newest CD, "gone" has been selling especially well in Japan. 

all photos above: Mark Coggins


photo: Geri Tablit

on to the gigs....

Sunday, July 19 - 3:00 to 6:00 PM - Jazz Matinee gig
Kurt Ribak Trio - original jazz
Armando's
www.armandosmartinez.com
707 Marina Vista
Martinez, CA
no cover

Greg Sankovich, Lincoln Adler, Kurt Ribak.  Armando's is a great room.  It's intimate, friendly, unpretentious, great acoustics, and cheap for the audience.  All the musicians I know love Armando's - the place really has the right spirit.  Roy Jeans and Eloise Cotton, who operate Armando's, love music.  That may sounds obvious or corny, but so many places that have music do not value it.

Come on down!

Monday, July 20 - 7:00 to 10:00 PM
Jazz Jam Session - hosted by Kurt Ribak - the third Monday of every month
Armando's
www.armandosmartinez.com
707 Marina Vista
Martinez, CA
$3 cover

We will be the house band for musicians.  Bring your axe and fake books, and have two tunes in mind you'd like to play.

This is developing into a very nice jam session - a lot of very good players are showing up.  It's the third Monday of every month.  The music is happening - this is a great chance to support live jazz in Contra Costa County.

Wednesday, July 22, 6:00 to 9:00 PM - and the FOURTH Wednesday of every month
Kurt Ribak Trio - Original jazz
Cato's Ale House
http://www.mrcato.com/
3891 Piedmont Ave., Oakland, CA
510-655-3349
all ages, no cover

The Riptide is a way cool bar in the outer Sunset - in fact, it's almost at the Pacific Ocean.  It's a great little neighborhood bar co-owned by Les James, the drummer for one of my favorite country bands, Red Meat and for Plain High Drifters.  There is a hipster element, despite the location, and there is a very friendly neighborhood bar vibe despite the hipster element.  Best of both worlds, really. 

The band is TBA at this point, but there is always a good mix of talent. They have good cheap drinks, folks are friendly, it's an easy place to hang out - how can you lose?

This is a good, old-fashioned bar.  Not a bistro, not a coffeehouse with a liquor license, but a bar.  They book a lot of good music there, but it's a comfy, slightly funky place.

We may have some guests sitting in as well - we shall see.

"One of the perks of being an unemployed musician is that you get to play much less bad music."  - Jack Daney

Hire us!

Kurt Ribak, individually, and the Kurt Ribak Trio collectively are available for other gigs. Leads for other gigs for the trio or for me as a sideman will be most welcome.   Feel free to call or e-mail.

Quotes about Kurt - > "Hugging Kurt is a like a big bear with no hair" - Monica, age 5, to her father

Kurt as a sideman - aka - Other People's Music

Sheilani Alix
Sheilani Alix often appears with us, and she often hires me and Greg Sankovich to back her.  She does a killer version of the Curtis Mayfield song "People Get Ready."

Here are some CDs I played on -

Lorna K
I have played with Lorna K for over a decade.  She has a new CD out entitled "Lorna K and the Dunes." The recording features her take on songs by Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys as well as some radical reinterpretations of songs including Duke Ellington's "What Am I Here For."

Lorna appeared at The Plush Room in the York Hotel in San Francisco last December in one of its final events.  She sold out the room! The instrumentalists on the recording and on the Plush Room date were Greg Sankovich on piano and Hammond Organ, Kurt Ribak on upright bass, Tom Griesser on clarinet and saxophone, and Bryan Bowman on drums. 

Alex Walsh's CD "Light Another Candle"is pop - a lot of it sounds like Mott the Hoople meets the Replacements to me. This was recorded in 2003. I play electric bass and upright on it.

Brian Schindele's CD The Moral is original straightahead jazz. I like it - the title tune kicks off the CD with some great drumming. This CD features Brian, drummer Tim Vaughan, Sheldon Brown on tenor sax, Tom Griesser playing sax on one track, Dave Scott on trumpet, cornet, and flugelhorn, Larry Leight on trombone, and Connie Champagne as featured guest vocalist on a ballad track.

I regularly played with Stephen Bigger at Moraga Valley Presbyterian Church, where he was music director. "Lights on the Horizon" is a CD of his contemporary Christian songwriting. Stephen sings lead on a number of the tunes, but he also features Amy Beth Nickelson and Katie O'Gorman, two very talented young members of the congregation at Moraga Valley.

Kurt Ribak Trio CDs
Our second CD, titled "more, " is at all the same locations as the first CD.

Online purchases of CDs
You can buy the CDs online at CDBaby.com.  
Here's the link for the debut Kurt Ribak Trio CD (three fingers),
and the link for the Kurt Ribak Trio CD "more."

Store purchases
You can also buy the CD at Groove Yard, 5555 Claremont Avenue Oakland, CA 94618, and at Down Home Music, 10341 San Pablo Avenue, El Cerrito, CA. Go to my CD page for more info.

Downloads
You can download the Kurt Ribak Trio recordings at iTunes and emusic.com, as well as elsewhere. We've been getting some attention at emusic - the recording is rated four out of five stars. You can do a trial membership for cheap, and recordings are way cheaper to download at emusic than with iTunes.  The new recording is available for sale at iTunes, emusic, and elsewhere.

Live downloads
You can go to BayTaper.com or http://mefeedia.com/feeds/21779/ to download our July 2, 2006 show at the Fillmore Jazz Festival. There are also some excellent photos there. The show is rated five stars out of five.

Big in Japan - or at least slightly less obscure...
The track "Pseudoafrocubanismo" from the first CD was licensed in Japan for use in a jazz compilation recording, "Jazz Bar 07." The first and second Kurt Ribak Trio CDs are also selling well in Japan.  In fact, it is easier to buy our CDs in a store in Japan than in the US.  What a strange world it can be...

Myspace site
You can also go to our Myspace page.  The one for the Kurt Ribak Trio has songs up on the site and gig listings.  There is also a Kurt Ribak Myspace site that is specifically for Kurt and includes his personal blog.  Add us to your friend list!

Click on the covers above to go to the CDBaby website, where the recordings are for sale.

T-shirts
We have a few Kurt Ribak Trio t-shirts remaining. These are a seven-color print on Hanes Beefy-T shirts, so these are a quality product. These echo the artwork of the first CD. They are black, with the three-colored hand on the front and the words "Kurt Ribak Trio" on the back. They come in women's sizes and cut from small to L and men's from small to medium. e-mail me at: kurt@ribak.com if you would like to buy a shirt, or catch up with me at a gig. Check them out here. Drummer Tim Solook and his wife Lisa are modeling them at our Fillmore Jazz Festival gig.

Bay Area Jazz Resources

Groove Yard Record Store and Newsletter
- Rick Ballard operates the Groove Yard at 5555 Claremont in Oakland. It's between the Rockridge and Temescal districts. It's a great jazz record store for used vinyl and new and used CDs by local as well as national and international artists. Rick has an e-mail newsletter. E-mail him at groove2@earthlink.net and request to be added and be up on the concerts, CDs, etc.

KCSM - FM Radio and Jazz Datebook
You can always check out who's playing in the Bay Area with KCSM-FM's Jazz Datebook.

You can listen to KCSM-FM  at 91.1 FM.  They are 24 hours jazz, no commercials. They are a huge contributor to the vitality of the Bay Area jazz scene.  You can listen online at http://www.kcsm.org/jazz91/listen.php

>We're like, all up in literature and stuff

Candy from Strangers

Mark Coggins is the author of the August Riordan series of mystery novels. The August Riordan character is a wise-cracking tough guy PI who is also a jazz bassist.

I got to know Coggins a while ago and he asked if he could use some of my music for a KQED podcast of "Candy from Strangers", the third book in the August Riordan series. William P. Arney of the Noir City Film Festival reads the first chapter with my music accompanying the story - specifically, "Prelude to a B Movie" and "Pseudoafrocubanismo," which appeared on the Kurt Ribak Trio debut CD.

The podcast is permanently at the following location: http://www.kqed.org/arts/writersblock/episode.jsp?id=13480

iTunes users can access The Writers' Block via the following URL: http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=82023860

Pulp Fiction
Also check out the Word for Word Theater Company performance of "Angel Face". This is a stage setting of a Cornell Woolrich story that originally appeared in the classic pulp magazine Black Mask.  Black Mask featured many of the best noir writers including Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler.

The Writers' Block is also distributed through NPR here: http://www.npr.org/rss/podcast/podcast_detail.php?siteId=5593982

To go directly to the audio, use either of these:
stream: http://www.kqed.org/.stream/real/topics/arts/writers-block/0701-coggins-bloc k.rm.ram or
download: http://podcastdownload.npr.org/anon.npr-podcasts/podcast/151/510076/7092336/ KQED_7092336.mp3

Gig Mailing List

To join my mailing list, you are welcome to click on SubscribeGiglist and include the address where you want to receive the mail in the body of the message. You are encouraged to mention how you heard of me.>

To get off the mailing list, just click UnsubscribeGiglist and include the address you want dropped from the mailing list in the body of the message.

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2009 gigs
May '09 gigs April '09 gigs March '09 gigs  February '09 gigs January '09 gigs

2008 gigs
December '08 gigs November '08 gigs October '08 gigs September '08 gigs August '08 gigs July '08 gigs June '08 gigs May '08 gigs April '08 gigs March '08 gigs February '08 gigs January '08 gigs

2007 gigs
December '07 gigs November '07 gigs October '07 gigs September '07 gigs July/August '07 June '07 gigs May '07 gigsApril '07 gigs March '07 gigsFebruary '07 gigs January '07 gigs

2006 gigs
december '06 gigs november '06 gigs October '06 gigs September '06 gigs August '06 gigs June-early August '06 gigs June '06 gigs May '06 gigs April '06 gigs March '06 gigs February '06 gigs January '06 gigs

2005 gigs
December '05 gigsNovember '05 gigsOctober '05 gigsSeptember '05 gigs August '05 gigs July '05 gigs May / June '05 gigs May '05 gigs March '05 gigs February '05 gigs January '05 gigs