Racer Sessions

It’s time, friends. The final Racer Session will be this Sunday, December 15th, at 7pm. Just like the first session at Cafe Racer in 2010, we’ll be presenting it fully open - nobody, everybody, and you are host to the music. We’re leaving extra time for folks to share their sounds as well as what the session has meant to them.

Thank you so much for turning out these last few months and filling the space with your music, spirit, and selves. We love you 💛

Three! More! Sessions! EVER! This Sunday at 7pm: at Gallery 1412, 7pm.

Elias Hampton is a guitarist, composer, songwriter, and educator in Seattle. He is a versatile musician who has taken on many collaborations, including as a multi-instrumentalist, recording engineer, and producer.

He is a graduate of the UW jazz program where he studied under renowned musicians such as Steve Rodby, Ted Poor, and Cuong Vu, and had the opportunity to perform with esteemed artists such as Andrew D’Angelo.

Since graduating, Elias has continued to be active in improvisational and contemporary music communities in Seattle, while also turning his focus toward songwriting, recording, and production.

He is currently working on his first album as a singer/songwriter.

Only five sessions left, including tonight! We’ll be joined by Jahnvi Madan, who will be joined by Carlos Snaider, who will play each other’s music for the first time. Music starting at 7pm ✨

Named Northwest Emerging Artist of the Year by Earshot Jazz, Jahnvi Madan is an Indian American clarinetist, composer, and songwriter from Bellevue. As a bandleader, she has performed her original music at several well-known Jazz Festivals, including the Washington D.C. Women in Jazz Festival, the Westerlies Festival, and recently at Earshot Jazz Festival, as their youngest commissioned composer. Madan has established herself locally, playing her music with her quintet at venues around Seattle like the Royal Room and most recently at Seattle Jazz Fellowship. She is a recent graduate of the New England Conservatory, where she studied under renowned musicians such as Jason Moran, Melissa Aldana, Dominique Eade, and Frank Carlberg. Madan is currently based in Seattle, where she performs regularly, teaches privately as well as through the nonprofit Seattle JazzED, and records for other artists.

Coming in hot! We have a Racer Session this Sunday at 7pm, and we’re so excited to be hosting Seattle’s newest resident Steph Richards!

“A rising force in avant-garde jazz” (Jazz Times), Steph Richards is a dynamic experimentalist known for her innovative approach to the trumpet and interdisciplinary expression as a composer. She has collaborated with visionaries ranging from Henry Threadgill, Anthony Braxton and John Zorn to art pop luminaries Yoko Ono, St. Vincent, David Byrne and Laurie Anderson. Her work as a composer is characterized by The New York Times as “boldly inventive…compos[ing] in ways that standard notation could never document” and her works span interactions with film, poetry, theatre, dance and scent.

Steph will be presenting supersonic plane, which is composed of:

steph richards, trumpet
Jai Kobi Kaleo’Okalani, guitar
Kelsey Mines, bass
Andrew Munsey, drumset