DOORS @6PM, SHOWTIME @6:30PM

From the first note of their new CD, "Convergence", you know that the Lunar Octet offers creative and original Latin jazz. The award-winning band plays highly original and eclectic music drawing on Cuban and Puerto Rican salsa, rock, African high-life music, and Brazilian sambas to forge a new sound enriched by these traditions. The band's original compositions involve rich arrangements and strong focus on soloists. The band's music is exciting, dynamic, and powerful, including fiery Latin grooves, driving funk rhythms, swinging bop tunes, and romantic ballads.

Since its debut, the band has carried its high-energy message to dancers and listeners, jazz, R&B, and rock fans alike. Winner of the WEMU-Depot Town Jazz Competition, the Lunar Octet has played hundreds of performances, including many years in the Montreux-Detroit Jazz Festival, the Flint Jazz Festival, the Columbus Jazz and Ribs Festival, the Scarborough Jazz Festival, the Columbus Arts Festival, the Lancaster Festival, the Ann Arbor Art Fair, the WEMU/Depot Town Winter Jazz Series, Rusty's Jazz Cafe, Ann Arbor's Top of the Park, the Bird of Paradise, the Del Rio, Mr. Flood's Party, the Blind Pig, the Detroit Festival of the Arts, Detroit's New Center Park, Toledo's CityFest, Toledo's Rib-Off, the Ann Arbor Art Fair, and many more. The Lunar Octet was the opening act on National Public Radio's national broadcast of the Miller Lite Montreux Detroit Jazz Festival.

THE BAND:

Justin Walter - trumpet

Steve Hiltner - alto saxophone

Paul VornHagen - tenor saxophone, soprano saxophone, flute, penny whistle

Sam Clark - guitar

Keaton Royer - piano

Jeff Dalton - bass

Jon Krosnick - drums

Aron Kaufman - congas, bongos, percussion

Olman Piedra - timbales, percussion