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Genre: Americana / Country / Folk

Ticket Price: $12 advanced / $14 day of show / $21 reserved seating

The vocalists who have worked with Grusin sing his praises. Local country rocker Eve Selishas worked with Grusin for years. ‘I wound up working with Martin when I was in a rather desperate situation,’ she says. ‘I’d been singing incorrectly for years and had caused my voice a lot of damage. I had a lot of gigs with my band, the Heroes, and lost my voice on a cold and rainy Thursday night gig. ThatSaturday my band, Kings Road, was opening for Crosby, Stills, and Nash, and I was going to do everything to keep that date. Martin worked with me that Friday and in that one session was able to pull my voice back to 80 percent.’ Selis sang thatFriday night, her bad habits loosing her voice again. A return visit to Grusin gave her 85 percent of her voice, and the performance with CSN was a success. ‘That night Stills and Nash stayed for my whole show, and Crosby was like, ‘Who is that? We have to follow her!’

Grusin is soft-spoken, yet his voice comes across full and easy to listen to. He speaks with the diction that any radio announcer would give his right arm for. Unsurprisingly, he has been singing his whole life. The Chicago native started singing at the age of seven, when he was at camp. Recognizing his inherent talent, the grownups encouraged him to keep singing.

After serving in the military, with a case of pneumonia keeping him from being shipped overseas, Grusin moved to the big time, New York City. He sang at the Village Vanguard, Birdland, and other jazz meccas. He worked with guitarist Mundell Lowe and shared billings with John Coltrane and other jazz icons of the day. Among his good friends and associates were the bassist and violinist Johnny Frigo and the premier scat singer Dave Lambert of the legendary jazz vocal trio Lambert, Hendrix, and Ross.

Grusin assembled a successful vocal trio of his own in the early sixties. Called, of all things, The Group, the ensemble combined Grusin with fellow tenor Tom Kampman and soprano Anne Gable. Their recording legacy is an album of a dozen show tunes and jazz standards that RCA Victor released in 1963. Downbeat magazine awarded the recording Best Jazz Vocal Group for that year. Grusin arranged the music for the record with Fred Karlan and Don Sebesky, who is known as the arranger of the hit ‘ComeSaturday Morning.’

Besides The Group, Grusin’s vocal ensembles performed on some of the biggest television shows, including Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show, The Shari Lewis Show, The Jim Backus Show, The Bobby Morse Show, and the perennial early morning staple, The Today Show.

After years in the limelight, Grusin moved to California and, well past the time in life that most folks start their academic career, went back to school. He earned a bachelors of music from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and a master’s in composition, theory, and vocal research at UCSD. Doctoral research continued at UCSD through the seventies. Besides his work as a performer and teacher, Grusin is also a composer. The National Endowment for the Arts honored him with awards for two of his compositions.