Jazz Phenom 
Alex Dugdale & Fade

Alex Dugdale studied tap since he was six years old, and discovered the pull of jazz while standing on a NYC subway platform from a man playing Duke Ellington’s Take the A Train on steel drums. “I put on my tap shoes, and took the ‘A’ train with the steel drum player, and we started jamming to it. The people in the station started to hear our conversation and watched and listened as we spoke through the music… the crowd got with the beat and followed us on board.”

Dugdale studied at the prestigious Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York—classical saxophone with Chien-Kwan Lin and jazz saxophone with José Encarnación and Charles Pillow, plus jazz with pianist Harold Danko, drummer Rich Thompson and bassist Jeff Campbell.

Four years of intense study shaped Dugdale’s sound. His saxophone echoes the melodic approach of Lester Young, Dexter Gordon and Hank Mobley. Dugdale’s rising star was spotted by Seattle’s Repertory Jazz Orchestra (SRJO), who began featuring his tap dancing on “David Danced Before the Lord” to climax the annual Duke Ellington Sacred Music Concert.

Dugdale and his band Fade perform often at Lucid, in the 
U-District; Dugdale also plays with the Smith Staelens Big Band at Tula’s and with the Hal 
Sherman Big Band. His groove is strong and the musical vocabulary derives from the 1950s hard bop style of improvising.
Dugdale (saxophone, tap) plays at VAA with Fade: Gabe Glennie (bass), Remy Morritt (drums) and Owen Ross (guitar). Vashon’s own Monday Night Jazz Club opens. 
Alex Dugdale and Fade
Vashon Allied Arts
Saturday, May 10, 7:30 pm
Tickets: $14 Member/Student/Senior, $18 General
VAA, Heron’s Nest, 
VashonAlliedArts.org