Don’t miss the Colin Graebert Trio (featuring 60% of AJP) at the Hilton Garden Inn in Bangor  this Thurday evening (3/4). Grab a seat at the bar, order up some hot wings, and enjoy some spectacular jazz in an intimate environment.

AJP plays Monk and Miles in Ogunquit!” On 6 February the ‘Project will head south to the Dunaway Center in Ogunquit for a themed show starting at 7.30. Sponsored by Ogunquit Performing Arts, this gig features the music of Miles Davis and Thelonious Monk and pays homage to the tremendous legacy these two jazz giants left us.

We are so excited about this that we can barely speak- a great venue, great music to choose from, and our first-ever show south of the mid-coast. A memorable night would seem to be in the offing… See you there!!

Check out the great write-up from Seacoast Online.

Come see the Project end the decade right at Bangor City Hall. Our set starts at 8:30 PM.

Check out all the other activities and events going on in downtown Bangor on the 31st as part of the Downtown Countdown.

The Project will be kicking off the festivities on the Bangor waterfront on Friday 8/28 at the Sea Dog. Come on down, grab a pint of Blue Paw Blueberry Wheat Ale, and enjoy the show! We’ll be playing from 5:00 – 6:30 PM, right before the kick off parade for the American Folk Music Festival.

Don’t forget that you can catch the Project at the Bar Harbor on August 21st. We’ll be playing from 6:00 – 8:00 PM at Agramont Park (corner of West & Main, Across from Geddy’s). If it rains we’re going to move into Carmen Veranda’s and play there. Come on down to Bar Harbor and watch the Project rock the Jazz Festival.

3/5 of The Project will be appearing at Paddy Murphy’s in Bangor on Thursday July 9 starting at about 7PM. There’s no cover, so come down, grab a pint and check us out.

PS – If you haven’t had them, try the fried pickles. You won’t regret it.

The Project is playing at a private function at the Whitehall Inn in Camden on Sunday June 21. If you are lucky enough to be attending, please let us know what you thought of the show in the comments section. We love getting feedback from our audience.

If you happened to get a good video or audio recording of our set, let us know that as well. We would like to add it to our site.

If you want to book the project for your public or private gig, contact us and let us know!

The boys in the ‘Project got the summer season off to a rousing start on the weekend of 8/9 May with appearances in Winter Harbor and Bangor.

On the 8th we awoke to see that our group was the subject of a feature article in the Bangor Daily News by Emily Burnham, our favorite music journalist in the whole world.

Later that day Austin, Gaylen, Mark, and newcomer to the group Colin Graebert (a Berklee-trained keyboard monster) kicked off the 2009 “Schoodic Arts For All” summer season with two shows at the wonderful Hammond Hall in Winter Harbor. At 1.00 we played for 100 local school kids in years 5-8, and then after a fantastic afternoon of local hospitality we hit it again with two white-hot sets at 7.00. Highlights included “So What” making time stand still as we opened the show, a scintillating “Footprints”/”Witch Hunt” combo, and a bunch of road-tripping Bapst students making the clave intro to “Blue Bossa” a LOT more challenging than it usually is… All hands agreed it was an epic night.

On the 9th we once again opened the John Bapst prom, this time staying and playing past our designated stop time because, well, we were just burning the room down and no one wanted it to end.

This summer finds us mostly on the coast, and “Project fans looking to see us really open it up might want to circle 21 August on the calendar. Bar Harbor might never be the same… Read more ›

Emily Burnham of the Bangor Daily News wrote a fantastic article about the Project for the May 8, 2009 edition of the paper. You can read the story here or on the Bangor Daily News page. (The article continues after the break.)

Jazz group to take you to school tonight

You can understand how passionate Mark Tasker is about jazz just by talking to him. When he’s not teaching social studies at John Bapst Memorial High School in Bangor, he’s living and breathing jazz — especially when he’s playing with his quartet, the Aurora Jazz Project.

Never interested in staying rooted in just one style, Tasker and his cohorts in Aurora — guitarist Brady Harris, bassist Galen Smith and drummers Austin Hodges and Dan Colageo, who switch off — are both purists and rebels when it comes to the music they love.