Rising jazz star Hailey Niswanger, part of the Berklee Global Jazz Institute, is touring North America this summer with her quartet. She wrote in from the Pacific Northwest. . .where there was apparently some sort of game recently played on ice.

Berklee College of Music’s West Coast tour is currently underway with the Hailey Niswanger Quartet. This exciting group is featuring myself on Alto and Soprano saxophones, Takeshi Ohbayashi on piano, Aaron Darrell on bass, and Mark Whitfield Jr. on drums.

We have had a great couple hits so far, the first being at Boxley’s, an enjoyable club located in North Bend, Washington, and the second at Artspring on Salt Spring Island, British Columbia. The island was fabulous, with wonderful people inhabiting it. Although we had some competition the night of our performance with the Vancouver Canucks in the hockey finals, we drew a nice crowd of about 65 people to Artspring, who were all excited and thrilled with our performance. The host families we stayed with were quite charming, welcoming, and fun people. We got to go on a lovely hike with them along the island shore and saw some tide pools with many crabs and a plethora of purple star fish.

Parting from the island and kind people we met was of course such sweet sorrow, but I know they will be life long friends that we will meet again someday. We are all excited to see my home city of Portland, Oregon, and thrilled to hear that the first set at Jimmy Mak’s is entirely sold out! Should be a great night of fun and music, and hopefully we can encourage more youth in the area to attend Berklee. We greatly thank the college for this exciting opportunity. ~Hailey



                         
 
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