Elkhart Jazz Festival Presents: Dave Bennett Quartet

This show is included with purchase of a Sunday Pass or Weekend Pass!

“Bennett is a player superbly well balanced between purity and power.  Bennett injects three heady shots of adrenalin that bring the music sharply to life.”  – Downbeat Magazine

Dave Bennett doesn’t fit the mold.

For starters, you don’t find many jazz clarinet players who name Alice Cooper, Stevie Ray Vaughan, and Chris Isaak among their influences. You won’t find many musicians who are equally conversant with the music of Benny Goodman (the “King of Swing”) and Roy Orbison (“The Soul of Rock and Roll”). In fact, you may not find even one other clarinet virtuoso who breaks from his Swing Era repertoire to sing rockabilly hits while accompanying himself at the piano or electric guitar. 

Dave began his national touring career at the age of 14. He has been a featured soloist at Carnegie Hall with The New York Pops (2013) and has been featured with 35 other US and Canadian orchestras including Nashville, Houston, Detroit, Rochester, Omaha, Toronto, Calgary, Vancouver, Orlando, San Antonio, Jacksonville, Portland, OR and Portland, ME.  Some of his annual appearances include The Elkhart Jazz Festival, The Suncoast Classic Jazz Festival, The Arizona Classic Jazz Festival, The Sacramento Hot Jazz Jubilee, The Clambake Music Festival, and The Redwood Coast Music Festival.  Dave has also opened for Sammy Hagar in Houston, TX in 2022.

Dave has been featured on NPR Radio’s “Jazz at Riverwalk.”  He made his European debut in 2008 at The Bern Jazz Festival (Switzerland) in a combo with jazz legends and Benny Goodman alumni guitarist Bucky Pizzarelli and vibraphonist Peter Appleyard.  He has also shared the stage with Ken Peplowski, Byron Stripling, Marcus Printup, Aaron Diehl, and Bria Skonberg. 

He has been featured soloist on several jazz cruises, performing with Harry Allen, Warren Vache, Allan Vache, Banu Gibson, and Tardo Hammer. 

Dave is a recording artist on jazz label Mack Avenue Records.  His second release, Blood Moon reached No. 24 on the Billboard Jazz charts in 2018. 

In March 2022, Dave and his band performed to a sold-out audience at New York City’s Birdland Theater.

During the isolation of the pandemic, fate steered Dave’s time off the road into a bold new direction. He put his guitar pedal to the metal and stepped away from his beloved clarinet. A songwriter stepped forward.  Road songs, reverb-laded guitar solos that could power a surf documentary, and memories of loves and lives lost are the mile markers that makeup his latest release “Nowhere Fast”.  His first full-length rock album is a deep, soul-searching joyride through the back streets of his mind. 

Dave has recently joined forces with guitarist/vocalist/pastor Tom Hampton for Dave’s first gospel project “Coming Home.”  This project has been a dream come true for both Dave and Tom and they are excited venture on this new musical path! 

This show is included with purchase of a Sunday Pass or Weekend Pass!

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