Lecturer Andrew Speight to Perform at Stanford Jazz Festival

SAN JOSE MERCURY NEWS -- Andrew Speight’s Bird with Strings: A longtime faculty member at San Francisco State, Australian-born alto saxophonist Andrew Speight got his hands on many of the original charts that Charlie Parker used performing with strings, the setting in which the bebop patriarch reached his widest audience. Combining his top-shelf jazz quartet and an expanded version of the Alexander String Quartet (with a third violin and oboe), Speight interprets soaring standards like Just Friends, I’ll Remember April and Autumn In New York with burnished, blue-flame intensity. 8 p.m. June 29, Dinkelspiel Auditorium.