The Hard Bop Quintet is a jazz group from the San Francisco Bay Area,

inspired by the fiery style of jazz of the same name, which fueled much of the

1960’s New York Jazz scene.

The group began as the brainchild of two Bay Area jazz musicians, who grew

up together in Santa Cruz, California: Trombonist Scott Larson, and Trumpeter

Jay Sanders. The idea for the band being to create a hard bop jazz group which

seamlessly fuses different musical aesthetics such as boogaloo, afro-cuban,

bebop, and down home blues, into the contemporary musical landscape. The

groups repertoire consists of original compositions by Larson, as well as new

interpretations of genre classics by legends such as Hank Mobley, Lee Morgan

and Kenny Dorham.

The Hard Bop Quintet has been regularly appearing at Club Deluxe in San

Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury for well over a decade, and has long consisted of

some of the Bay Area’s finest jazz musicians, including: pianist Keith Saunders,

bassist Eric Markowitz, and drummers Evan Hughes and Smith Dobson.