The Eli and Edy the Broad Stage presents the return of four-time GRAMMY® Award-winning bass virtuoso Stanley Clarke and his band on Saturday, January 19 at 7:30pm. Clarke performs with electric and acoustic ferocity, backed by a stellar troupe of exciting young musicians. Rolling Stone’s first Jazzman of the Year, Clarke’s creativity has been recognized and rewarded in every way imaginable.

Stanley Clarke has attained “living legend” status during his over 40-year career as a bass virtuoso. He is the first bassist in history who doubles on acoustic and electric bass with equal ferocity and the first jazz-fusion bassist ever to headline tours, selling out shows worldwide.

A veteran of over 40 albums, he won the 2011 Best Contemporary Jazz Album Grammy Award for The Stanley Clarke Band. Clarke co-founded the seminal fusion group Return to Forever with Chick Corea and Lenny White. In 2012 Return to Forever won a Grammy Award and Latin Grammy for Best Jazz Instrumental Album, Forever.

Clarke’s most recent CD, The Message, was release on June 29 on Mack Avenue Records. It’s a vision of fusion and funk, breakbeats and bass-interpreted cello suites with a little help from friends like rapper/beatboxer Doug E. Fresh and trumpeter Mark Isham. Backed by a young versatile band and a collection of tunes written in the midst of a tumultuous tour of Europe.

“I’m very excited about our work on this album. I wanted to include some of my band members’ contributions and the result is an album that is funky, melodic, musical, contemporary and fresh with a rich multi-genre influence,” Clarke commented. “The guys in this band are consummate young musicians with musical spirits that are very old.”

The Stanley Clarke Band is Stanley Clarke (bass), Beka Gochiashvili (piano), Cameron Graves (keys), and Michael Mitchell (drums).

Clarke’s creativity has been recognized and rewarded in every way imaginable: gold and platinum records, GRAMMY® Awards, Emmy nominations, virtually every readers and critics poll in existence, and more. He was the bassist winner of Playboy’s Music Award for ten straight years. Clarke was honored with Bass Player Magazine’s Lifetime Achievement Award and is a member of Guitar Player Magazine’s “Gallery of Greats.” In 2004 he was featured in Los Angeles Magazine as one of the Top 50 Most Influential People. He was honored with the key to the city of Philadelphia and put his hands in cement as a 1999 inductee into Hollywood’s “Rock Walk” on Sunset Boulevard. In 2011 he was honored with the highly prestigious Miles Davis Award at the Montreal Jazz Festival for his entire body of work. For years Clarke has consistently won Downbeat Magazine’s Critics Poll for Best Electric Bass Player.

An accomplished film and TV composer of over 65 projects, his credits include Boyz N The Hood, the Tina Turner biopic What’s Love Got To Do With It, Romeo Must Die and The Transporter, and Best Man Holiday. He has garnered three Emmy Nominations and a BMI Award for his scoring. In 2014, Clarke was invited to become a member of the exclusive Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences.

Born in Philadelphia, Clarke has been a constant force of nature in American music since the early 1970s with the success of the jazz-fusion group Return To Forever. That accomplishment gave way to a number of extremely successful solo albums for Clarke. Along the way, he has collaborated with Quincy Jones, Stan Getz, Art Blakey, Paul McCartney, Jeff Beck, Keith Richards, Aretha Franklin, Stevie Wonder, Chaka Khan, The Police, Herbie Hancock and many more, and has shared the stage with Bob Marley and Miles Davis.

Clarke heads his own record label, Roxboro Entertainment Group. Five artists were chosen for its first releases; Lloyd Gregory, Sunnie Paxson, Ruslan Sirota, Kennard Ramsey and jazz piano prodigy Beka Gochiashvili from Tbilisi, Republic of Georgia.