John Menegon Trio Essence – Birthday Bash!

John Menegon Trio Essence – Birthday Bash!
August 8 @ 7:00 pm - 10:00 pm

• John Menegon – bass
• Pete Smith – guitar
• Matt Garrity – drums

Musicians invited to sit in and help celebrate!

New York City bassist John Menegon started his career playing bass in Montreal. After having worked for several years on the Canadian jazz scene with the great guitarists Sonny Greenwich, Mike Gauthier & Nelson Simons, and saxophonists Steve Grossman & Pat LaBarbara, he went on to hone his skills in NYC in the mid-80s. Since moving to New York to study Jazz at Long Island University on a full scholarship, John has performed/recorded with Dewey Redman, David “Fathead” Newman, Matt Wilson, Frank Kimbrough, John Hicks, Yoron Israel, Jack DeJohnette, Kenny Burrell, Joel Frahm, Pat Metheny, Kenny Barron, Paul Bley, Anthony Braxton’s Tri-Centric Orchestra, Nick Brignola, Jimmy Cobb, Al Foster, Slide Hampton, Sheila Jordan, Lee Konitz, Joe Lovano, and many others. In addition to touring, recording, and composing, he has created and taught Jazz Workshops on the music of Jaco Pastorius, Miles Davis, and Charles Mingus at Williams College.

Pete Smith is a New York City-based guitarist who performs in a wide range of musical settings. As a founding member of Santos4tet (aka Grupo los Santos), a vanguard Afro-Cuban and Brazilian-style quartet, he has played New York’s Town Hall, concerts throughout the U. S., Cuba & Austria and was a Fall 2024 JazzRoad performing arts grant recipient. He has performed at the Berlin Jazz Festival and Montreal Jazz Festival, as well as concerts in thirty countries throughout Europe, Eastern Europe, Africa and Asia. He has worked with Norah Jones, trumpeter Donald Byrd, Cuban trombone master Juan Pablo Torres, Andrew Hill, Kat Edmonson, Vince Giordano & the Nighthawks, the Moonlighters, Madeline Peyroux, Natalie Merchant and Huun-Huur-Tu, and is a member of Michael Feinstein’s Carnegie Hall Big Band. In 2023 he traveled to Congo-Kinshasa as a member of the band Opius Bliss—as cultural ambassadors for the US Embassy—to perform for and teach, play and dialogue with local musicians in Kinshasa and Kisangani. 2023 also saw the release of Santos4tet’s 4th album “Santos 4”. Pete will be recording a new album with bassist Sean Smith (The Smith Duo) in 2025.

Drummer Matt Garrity has been on the New York City music scene since 1994. He has performed with Vincent Herring, David Williams, Teri Thornton, Gary Versace, Ron McLure, Ben Monder, Ratzo Harris, Jeremy Pelt and Jerome Richardson, among others. Matt attended William Paterson College’s jazz studies program in the early nineties and has studied with John Riley, Horacee Arnold, Rufus Reid, Harold Mabern, Carl Allen, Bill Goodwin, and Ed Shaughnessy.