FUNKWAYS SUMMER 2024
FIELD HALL PUTS LOCAL MUSICIAN IN THE LIMELIGHT
Our fantastic new events center and theater officially stated their vision to "inspire, nurture, and empower the local arts community, enrich local cultural and educational experiences, and spark economic activity throughout the region" and will continue to do exactly that, just eleven months after officially opening to the public. On Saturday, June 29th, The Field Arts & Events Hall will put local musician and composer Joel Ricci and his band, Funkways, on the theater stage to showcase Ricci's new original jazz works, and then, later on the same night, in the Sunset Lounge for a good old-fashioned booty-shaking funk jam. Every surface of the world-class venue will reverberate with Ricci's all-original "primitive funk and vernacular jazz," and concertgoers will be treated to his beguiling original minimalist melodies and trance-oriented rhythms from the classic soul band ensemble lineup of drums, bass, double electric guitars, and a four-piece horn section of tenor and alto sax, baritone sax, trombone, and Ricci on trumpet and percussion. "It's really an all-star cast of some of Seattle's finest and most in-demand Funk, Soul, and Jazz players representing the Seattle Funk scene in general, including guys from Polyrhythmics, True Loves, Unsinkable Heavies, Oscillators, and many, many more," says Ricci.
Though Joel Ricci, the 9-year Port Angeles resident, has been performing all over the Pacific Northwest for over 20 years, he still travels frequently to Seattle, Bellingham, and Olympia to play and record music, both as a leader and a sideman. "I live with my cat in a peaceful cabin in the woods up in the foothills of the North Olympic Mountains and spend most of my winter composing and practicing so I can come out and show the world my new music in the spring and summer." "I like to follow the rhythm of the seasons and the way they inform my compositional practice."
Ricci, who also hosts a Community Jazz Jam session with his group, the 101 Quartet, every first Monday of the month at the New Moon Craft Tavern, is also a student of local luminary Dr. David Jones from the Peninsula College and studied with him at Eastern Washington University, where he got his Bachelor's in Music Degree in 1999, and again, later, at the Peninsula College as a trumpet player in the Peninsula College Big Band as well as a private student of Dr. Jones. "Dr. David Jones is a giant to me as a composer, arranger, performer, and mentor, and I can't believe my good fortune to have found him already well established in Port Angeles when I moved here."
"This Field Hall event will be a highlight of my career," says Ricci, who has enjoyed a few career highlights recently, including having an original composition of his "I Believe in Love" placed in a major motion picture, Monkey Man, directed by and starring Dev Patel and produced by Jordan Peele. "It's really cool that the message of "I Believe in Love," which was rendered as a collaboration with my friends, Polyrhythmics, is getting spread all over the world. I am Lucky," he says.
