On the road to medical school, guitarist A. Spencer Barefield made a detour. His passion for the guitar and jazz tore him away from the medical career he was pursuing, but there have been few regrets.
A life-long Detroiter, Barefield had a demanding life as a musician even as a teenager at Cass Tech, where his R&B/jazz/rock group the Seven Sounds performed every weekend.
When Motown asked the 16-year-old to join Gladys Knight and the Pips and tour the world, Spencer was ready, but his parents were adamant that he could not drop out of school. Several years later, while studying at Michigan State, Spencer’s life took another turn when he met legendary saxophonist Roscoe Mitchell from the Art Ensemble of Chicago. The collaboration lead to the creation of the Creative Arts Collective, Spencer’s first recording on Roscoe’s LP, and performances with the Roscoe Mitchell Sound Ensemble, which took him to stages around the world. This was a beginning of a prolific career performing, touring and recording with his own ensembles and with numerous jazz greats.
A well-respected composer, he has been awarded grants for composition and performance by National Endowment for the Arts, Arts International, Meet the Composer/Lila Wallace Foundation/Readers Digest Commission USA, Michigan Council for Arts and Cultural Affairs, ArtServe and others.
Barefield has performed internationally with his own ensembles and with jazz luminaries such as Lester Bowie, Roscoe Mitchell, Oliver Lake, Richard Davis and many others. He is the Artistic Director of the Creative Arts Collective (CAC), a non-profit organization dedicated to the presentation, preservation and creation of jazz and other artistic expressions since 1978. CAC was a recipient of the Governors Arts Award for most valuable arts organization in the state, and presented a 13-year concert series at the Detroit Institute of Arts. Several concerts from the Creative Music at the DIA series will soon be released on CD. Spencer can be heard on many CDs and has received numerous awards for composition and performance.
CAC produces the Palmer Woods Music in Homes concert series for the Palmer Woods Association.
Tad Weed is a powerhouse of a pianist who recently relocated from Los Angeles to the Midwest. Tad’s discography includes over a dozen CD’s, and he has performed with some of the greatest names in jazz including John Patitucci, Mundell Lowe, Carmen McRae, Charles Lloyd, Bobby Bradford, and Woody Herman. His artistically rich and diverse background allows him to command a wide range of styles, from Be Bop to Blues, and from Funk to Avant Garde.
Famed music critic Leonard Feather describes the pianist: " Tad Weed displays a very rare ability to cross over from dashing bop lines to rich impressions, he has the bases coverer, from funky blues to the border of the avant-garde."
Weed is also in demand as an educator and has given clinics with Bill Walrous, Bobby Shew, Jerome Richardson, Don Menza, George Shearing and Bud Shank throughout the US.
In 2000, when Weed returned to his hometown of Jackson, Michigan, he became a fixture in Ann Arbor’s jazz community. He bonded with top local musicians such the late saxophonist Larry Nozero and trumpeter Louis Smith. He became the house pianist at bassist Ron Brooks’ now-defunct Bird of Paradise nightclub, musical director for singer Shahida Nurullah, and a member of the Phoenix Ensemble.
DONALD MAYBERRY
Bassist Donald Mayberry began his career at age of 13 with jazz harpist Dorothy Ashby. He later performed internationally with David Bowie, Lena Horne, Dizzy Gillespie, Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers and many others. Also a highly respected classical bassist, he has played with the Detroit and Scandinavian Symphony Orchestras. Don can be heard on numerous CDs and has an extremely demanding schedule performing throughout the country.
