Drummer Sylvia Cuenca Performs with Music Lecturer Andrew Speight

SAN FRANCISCO CLASSICAL VOICE -- Throughout the persistent pandemic, a cadre of instrumentalists has sustained the sound and feel of fine jazz at Sunday afternoon sessions summoned by alto saxophonist and San Francisco State University instructor Andrew Speight. “A lot of the chemistry,” he told the small masked audience in his Burlingame living room studio last month, “is built around the drummer. And today the drummer, and the drama, is Sylvia Cuenca.” Dynamic and tasteful, Cuenca has been seen regularly with Speight and at venues returning to live music around the Bay Area, including the Bird and Beckett bookstore in San Francisco’s Glen Par, the Black Cat club in the Tenderloin, and the Kuumbwa Jazz Center in Santa Cruz — securing the rhythm alongside her musical and life partner, bassist Essiet Okon Essiet.