Show announcement | Elijah Jamal Balbed, Tim Whalen & Amy K. Bormet at the D.C. Jazz Loft -

This Sunday we’re back with the March edition of the D.C. Jazz Loft, and it features three artists we’ve been wanting to highlight for quite a while. With the weather climbing steadily toward spring this weekend, it’s a perfect moment to dig out of your igloo and head to Union Arts for some unexpected sounds.

We’ll be featuring Amy K. Bormet, the talented pianist who also runs the Washington Women in Jazz Festival. (Later this month, CapitalBop will co-present a really exciting show with the festival, featuring Bormet alongside international stars Mary Halvorson and Allison Miller. You can think of this as an appetizer, or just a bonus portion.) Then there’s the 24-year-old tenor saxophone whiz Elijah Jamal Balbed, who’s been playing on CapitalBop stages since 2010, and will be leading a truly top-flight quintet featuring some of the area’s very best. And the pianist Tim Whalen, a commanding player with a knack for fascinating arrangements and compositions, will lead a quartet featuring the excellent saxophonist Tedd Baker.

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Doors at Union Arts open at 7, and the music will be going til late. The loft is BYOB, and a donation of $15 for the musicians is suggested. When you get to Union Arts, enter through the back entrance (turn into the parking lot off of 4th Street NE). See you there!

AMY K. BORMET

Bormet is a talented pianist and composer who worked over the last few years in the Bohemian Caverns Jazz Orchestra, Shannon Gunn & the Bullettes, and her own bands. She’s got a firm and often humorous approach to her piano solos, which she’ll put on display here with a small band. This show anticipates the Washington Women in Jazz Festival later this month.

ELIJAH JAMAL BALBED QUINTET

Forget the fact that he’s got a bright, friendly and strong tone that’s likely to remind you of Dexter Gordon, Sonny Rollins and other greats. Just look at the lineup Balbed is bringing to the loft: the guitarist Samir Moulay, the pianist Mark Meadows, the bassist Kris Funn and the drummer Corey Fonville. Moulay has toured the world with Macy Gray, while Funn and Fonville are members of the famed Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah’s band. With Balbed’s smart and exciting compositions in circulation, this group is sure to provide one of the area’s best sets of modern straight-ahead jazz this month.

TIM WHALEN QUARTET

Tim Whalen is more than a strong and inventive pianist. He’s got an ear for the way things fit together, and his arrangements are typically humid and entrancing. He even orchestrated a portion of the Grammy-winning soundtrack to The Motorcycle Diaries. He often appears with a large ensemble, but here Whalen presents a thrilling quartet, with the Airmen of Note’s Tedd Baker on saxophone, Eliot Seppa on bass and Carroll Dashiell III on drums.