Preview: Sunday Schenectady Matinees (Wish I could hit both…)

Both afternoon concerts in Schenectady Sunday honor eminent women musical and cultural heroes. In showtime order, area jazz stars honor our late great piano goddess Lee Shaw at the Carl B. Taylor Auditorium at SUNY Schenectady County Community College Music School; and a stage full of folksong players and singers celebrate another late, great – Jackie Alper – at the Eighth Step at Proctors Addy Theatre. 

Lee Shaw. Wikipedia photo

The Lee Shaw Centennial Tribute stars, alphabetically: guitarist Mike DeMicco, pianists Dave Gleason and Nick Hetko, drummer Jeff “Siege” Siegel and bassist Rich Syracuse. They’ll play a tribute show with extras, honoring a giant talent in a tiny frame. Oklahoma-born Lee Shaw settled hereabouts with bassist husband Stan in the 1960s and galvanized the jazz scene. They led bands and played everywhere, until Stan died. Then Lee continued amazing audiences from stages large and small, mentoring many musicians including John Medeski and recording albums fans treasure to this day. 

Sunday’s tribute will include excerpts from Susan Robbins’s documentary on Shaw, “Lee’s 88 Keys,” plus live performances. A tiny dynamo, she took over every stage she played, but she confessed to being so nervous about performing at the Saratoga Jazz Festival that she donned two left shoes before the gig.

The last group Shaw led up to her death in 2015 co-starred Siegel and Syracuse, who still often perform as a team. They played with Hetko at the recent Eddies Hall of Fame show at Universal Preservation Hall in Saratoga Springs that honored Shaw and other musicians and music scene notables.

Presented by A Place for Jazz, it’s also both a season announcement event and a season-ticket sale. A Place for Jazz supports music education through a scholarship program and Sunday’s show will feature Lee Shaw scholarship award winners in an opening set led by school faculty member and trumpeter Dylan Canterbury.

Show time is 2 p.m. Sunday. Admission is $25 and season memberships will be on sale as well. Different membership levels provide different ticket packages. At $125-$249, buyers receive tickets to all seven shows in the fall 2026 season (five tickets at full price, plus 2 bonus tickets). Buyers at $250-$374 get 14 tickets on the same formula: 10 purchased tickets and four bonus. The same math applies at $375, $500 and $1,000 levels. 

Again, Sunday’s Lee Shaw Centennial Tribute begins at 2 p.m. $25. http://www.aplaceforjazz.org.

Jackie Alper – another physically small, culturally enormous star – arguably cast as imposing a shadow as Shaw. At 3 p.m., the 8th Step at Proctors presents “Ms. Music: The Jackie Alper Story” in Proctors upstairs Addy Theatre. 

Jackie Alper. Photo provided. Famed for the many political buttons she always wore, Jackie could sometimes be heard coming into a room as they clicked together.

A repeat performance of last November’s premiere, this features the same extraordinary cast – an area ensemble like the Lee Shaw crew. Again, alphabetically, it’s Kate Blain, vocals; Greg Giorgio, vocals and narration; Howard Jack, vocals and bass; Ruth Pelham, guitar, vocals and narration; Mike Slik, dobro, steel guitar and vocals; Charlie Rhynhart, guitar, bass and vocals; Toby Stover, keyboard, percussion and vocals; Alan Thompson, piano and vocals; George Wilson, fiddle, banjo, 12-string guitar and vocals.

Researched and assembled over a year’s work by Old Songs founder Andy Spence and her successor Sarah Dillon, the project culminates work 8th Step impresario Margie Rosenkranz began years ago. The production combines songs Jackie Alper sang, wrote and introduced to folk fans thorough her “Mostly Folk” WRPI radio show – with narration summarizing her extraordinary career as creative catalyst, activist and guiding light.

I knew Jackie Alper for decades, including non-stop talk on road trips; and I still learned amazing things from the premiere performance. To sum up, she sang with Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger and Paul Robeson; she worked with the archivist Lomax team presenting shows and preserving history; she introduced area folk fans to new music – and new-to-us old music – on her decades-long “Mostly Folk” WRPI-FM “Mostly Folk” show, and she supported every progressive political and social movement from the Depression-wracked 30s through the turbulent 60s to her passing in 2007.

Andy Spence conducted the premiere performance of “Ms Music: Jackie Alper,” confidently keeping everyone on track in a complex presentation combining narration with music; tales and tunes spun together in a fine flow.

Andy Spence, left, conducts the ensemble that honored Jackie Alper last November. My photo

Show time Sunday is 3 p.m. General admission $32.21, Gold Circle front and center $51.76. 518-346-6204 www.proctors.org