Get your "Blues On". Back by popular demand from their " SOLD OUT" show last year".

Please join us for the “GRAND OPENING” event of Marin Jazz @ the Lark Theater. Marin Jazz and the Lark Theater present these 3 powerhouse singers are internationally known touring and recording artists have been ambassadors of the Blues all around the world coming together for this Fundraiser benefiting the kid’s foundation.

Marin Jazz and the Lark Theater present these 3 powerhouse singers are internationally known touring and recording artists have been ambassadors of the Blues all around the world.

Tia Carroll brings her own style of energy and spark to the stage with her unique approach. It's all about a good time, dancing shoes and maybe a few tears for the emotional cuts. In 2007 she won the West Coast Female Blues Vocalist of the year and in 2008 she received the Just Blues Music Foundation’s Traditional Blues Woman of the Year. She topped that in 2009 with West Coast Hall Of Fame Female Band Leader of the Year and R&B vocalist of the year in 2011.

Terrie Odabi will draw you into her world with her inspiring and powerful voice & lyrics. She is a 7-Time Blues Award Nominee. They call her the "queen of blues". Her message of peace, equality and love are unmistakable while bringing the news about what it was, what it is and what it can be. Terri stands as a prominent figure in the blues scene.

Lady Bianca, is a force of nature and we saved the best for last. Once seated on her throne (piano bench) she will show you where all the blues, soul, gospel, rock, country etc., came from. She has sung with the likes of Van Morrison, Frank Zappa and Merle Haggard. Deeply rooted in the blues she's Oakland's finest female blues singer. No wonder she was awarded the BLUES OVATION for "Best 2002. She is also a three-R&B Female Vocalist" in time Grammy nominee and on August 16, 2023, was awarded the Legendary Blues award by The Golden Gate Blues Society. Lady Bianca has also been voted Oakland's "female vocalist of the year" in 1989, 1990 and 1991.

Please join us in celebrating the “Grand Opening of the Season” on Sat August 16th at 7pm at the Lark Theater, 549 Magnolia Ave., Larkspur, CA

Broadway Night with Brian Justin Crum & Special Guest

Presented by Marin Jazz & The Lark Theater.

Please join us for this Broadway Night Fundraiser benefiting the kid’s foundation.

Brian Justin Crum
Brian Justin Crum (BJC) is a powerhouse vocalist and singer-songwriter based in Los Angeles, celebrated for his emotive performances and soaring vocal range.

His debut single, Show Me Love, climbed to #2 on the Billboard Dance Charts and was ranked among the Top 10 dance records of 2017, alongside artists like Rihanna, Dua Lipa, and Ed Sheeran.
BJC gained widespread acclaim after his haunting rendition of Radiohead’s Creep on America’s Got Talent, which went viral with over 100 million views.

His Broadway cover of Never Enough also made a splash, charting on iTunes' Pop Charts.

With a career that began on Broadway at just 17, Crum has starred in major productions like Wicked, Next to Normal, and We Will Rock You, performing with original QUEEN members Brian May and Roger Taylor.

Now an international headliner, Brian’s debut EP reflects the electronic pulse of Berlin nightlife—blending pop melodies with house and techno beats. His upcoming single, Other Side, offers a glimpse into a transformative year of personal and artistic evolution.

He is currently starting in Joseph and The Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat in Los Angeles ( LA) before he heads to Marin Jazz to Headline Broadway Night .

Lavay Smith & Her Red Hot Skillet Lickers are internationally recognized as one of the top bands in
the world performing classic American jazz, swing, blues, R&B and New Orleans music from the mid
twentieth century.

Lavy is singing the Count Basie, Dinah Washington, Bessie Smith, Little Esther Phillips Song Book of classics.

A True All-Star Band: Lavay’s group is universally respected for it’s world-class musicianship, and
includes some of the top musicians on the scene today.

Her bandmembers have played with Ray
Charles, Etta James, Frank Sinatra, Benny Goodman, Santana, Wynton Marsalis, Big Mama Thornton,
Taj Mahal, Van Morrison, Tito Puente, Steve Miller, Ramsey Lewis, Johnny Otis, Sy Oliver, Vince
Guaraldi, Rufus Thomas, Rosemary Clooney, Anita O’Day and many other giants of American music.

Authentic Jazz & Blues: Lavay Smith & Her Red Hot Skillet are often called upon to present
historical programs of music at world-class venues like Jazz at Lincoln Center and the SF Jazz
Center/SF Jazz Festival (where they are the most-booked act in the organizations history).

Kim Nalley "a joyful Billie Holiday"

Presented by Marin Jazz & The Lark Theater.


San Francisco vocalist Kim Nalley has distinguished herself internationally with a beguiling combination of sass, soul and smarts.

She’s a rare artist with the dramatic presence, stylistic breadth and technical skill to pay a fitting tribute to the legendary Billie Holiday, portraying Holiday in stage plays and in her own signature show, The Heart of Lady Day.

Throughout her notable career, Nalley has convincingly sung songs associated with the legendary jazz singer, doing saucy numbers like “Comes Love” with Johnny Nocturne’s jump-blues band in the 1990s and classics like “God Bless the Child” during her sold-out runs in recent years at Jazz at Lincoln Center.

Describing Nalley as “full of sass, skill and authority,” DownBeat says she “embodies the spirit of Billie Holiday without ever losing her own artistic integrity.”

A blues-loving jazz singer with a luxuriously rich voice, Nalley does Lady Day her way.

Kim Nalley doesn't just sell a song. Her body dancing as her remarkably full and flexible voice sails all around and through the melody, Nalley sells the whole room - and then some.

You don't need those gardenias in her hair to realize that her tuneful, buoyant, sexy and joyfully jazzy Rrazz Room debut is one helluva tribute to Billie Holiday.

That's right, joyful. Anyone looking for an evening with the cracked husk of a voice but still fine stylings of Holiday's final years will have to go elsewhere. Nalley's "The Heart of Lady Day," which opened Thursday, celebrates the young songbird who made her voice one of the greatest of jazz instruments.

Nalley is the woman for the job. A fine vocalist, she has the range - 3 1/2 octaves - to cover everyone from Bessie Smith, whose earthy tones infuse her version of a very, young Holiday on "'Taint Nobody's Business," to the vocal pyrotechnics of Ella Fitzgerald - as she does, hilariously, in her and Holiday's takes on "Fine and Mellow." And she performs with a generosity of spirit that embraces and energizes the entire audience.

The 90-minute Marin Jazz set is an abridged version of a longer tribute Nalley developed after playing the young Holiday in the play "Lady Day in Love." Thursday, she was still shaping the show on the fly, editing the song list as she went along. It scarcely matters which songs get left out and which included. Every one Nalley and her band perform is a classic.

She doesn't imitate Holiday so much as channel her spirit - at its most spirited and musically inventive - whether in evoking the familiar swing from rapid phrasings to a long drawl, swooping from angelic highs to guttural low notes or delighting in a rapid scat duet with drummer Kent Bryson.

This is the Billie Holiday of my youth, the one who sang in the club downstairs when I was an infant in Greenwich Village and whose 78s were the soundtrack of my childhood.

Nalley makes her sing again.

- By Robert Hurwitt,Chronicle Theater Critic, SFGATE

Freda Payne "Valentines is for Lovers"

Freda Payne is best known for her 1970 hit from Invictus Records, "Band of Gold," written by the founders of Invictus, the famed Motown hit team, Holland-Dozier-Holland (Lamont Dozier and brothers Brian and Eddie Holland).

But she began her career as a jazz singer in the early to mid-1960s. One of her biggest influences during that time was one of jazz's greatest vocalists, Ella Fitzgerald. Payne references other inspirations, but claims "Ella was the one I felt most attached to." So it's fitting that some 60 years later,

Payne pays tribute to the greats, Ella Fitzgerald, Nina Simone, Carmen McRae and many more.
Payne is a delightful storyteller, cluing us in on Ella's early forays on the stage–including her appearance at the Apollo Theater's amateur night, where she had intended to dance, but ended up singing and winning that night–and being discovered by big band leader Chick Webb, the night was mostly about the songs Ella sang. With an uber-tight trio of musicians (Larry Dunlap; bassist Gary Brown; and drummer Leon Joyce, Jr.) are on board to keep the mood swinging from start to finish. Quote by Patrick Thomas

Payne's love for the Queens of Jazz is evident in every moment of her performance.

Please join Marin Jazz and The Lark Theatre this Valentines day SAT Feb 14th for a special night.

The Paula West Show, Sat Oct 25th, 2026

Love is a many splendored thing, but in the world of Paula West, it”s also fraught and ferocious, carnal, capricious, hilarious and heartbreaking. The San Francisco jazz singer who thrives in cabaret settings is back at Marin Jazz in Larkspur at the Lark Theatre on a run with a strikingly contemporary show that seamlessly moves from Bob Dylan and David Bowie to Irving Berlin and Kurt Weill.

Paula is a staple of Marin Jazz and an artist that you just can't miss every time she plays it's a date night for you and your partner.

Don't miss out buy your tickets now!!