Sinne Eeg and Peter Sprague
It’s been 11 years since leading Danish jazz singer Sinne Eeg made her San Diego debut with noted Encinitas guitarist Peter Sprague, whose previous musical collaborators include Sonny Rollins, Pat Metheny, Dianne Reeves and the late Chick Corea.
Sprague learned about Eeg from former San Diego pianist Butch Lacy, who had moved to Dennmark and did all of the string arrangements on Eeg’s sixth album, 2012’s beguiling “The Beauty of Sadness.”
“She’s really something.” Sprague said of Eeg in a 2013 Union-Tribune interview. “I think she’s off the Richter scale!”
A 2003 graduate of Denmark’s Music Conservatory of West Jutland, Eeg has made five more albums since her first San Diego concert with Sprague. The latest, “Staying in Touch,” is a duo recording with the excellent bassist Thomas Fonnesbaek. It is their second album together. It is also one of the few that comes to mind — apart from Sheila Jordan’s releases with bass greats Steve Swallow, Cameron Brown and Harvie Swartz — that features only a vocalist and a bassist.
But “only” is a misnomer. The skill and imagination Fonnesbaek and four-time Danish Music Award-winner Eeg bring to “Staying in Touch” is formidable. So are their enchanting versions of Thelonious Monk’s “Round Midnight,” Joni Mitchell’s “The Dry Cleaner from Des Moines,” Dave Brubeck’s Paul Desmond-penned classic, “Take Five” and such chestnuts as “Just One of Those Things” and “How Deep is the Ocean?”
Eeg’s most recent San Diego concert was in 2022. It teamed her with Los Angeles pianist Josh Nelson and guitarist Larry Koonse, a periodic musical partner of Sprague’s. For her performance here this weekend, Eeg will be accompanied by Sprague, pianist Danny Green, bassist Mackenzie Leighton and ace drummer Duncan Moore.
Arrive early to get a seat — admission is free.
5 p.m. Sunday. Tio Leo’s 5302 Napa Street, Bay Park. Free. (619) 542-1462, tioleos.com/music
Jamie Shadowlight benefit concert, featuring Shamini Jain, Monette Marino, Roni Lee Group
If all goes as hoped, eclectic violinist Jamie Shadowlight will perform a song or two at the Sunday benefit concert being held on her behalf at the Music Box.
The 2023 San Diego Music Hall of Fame inductee was diagnosed last March with stage four cervical cancer and told she had about six months to live. She has defied those odds and continues to perform whenever she is able.
Sunday’s concert is being put on by the Rock Goddess collective, which was co-founded by Shamini Jain and Roni Lee. Now based in South Carolina, Jain is the former lead singer of two San Diego tribute bands, the Iron Maiden-inspired Up the Irons the Guns N’ Roses-inspired Nuns N’ Moses. Her new solo album, “Kali Yuga Blues,” features Shadowlight on the uplifting song “Imaginal Cells.”
Sunday’s lineup also includes bands led by veteran guitarist and singer-songwriter Roni Lee, and percussionist Monette Marino, one of Shadowlight’s fellow 2023 San Diego Music Hall of Fame inductees.
7:30 p.m. Sunday. Music Box, 1337 India St., downtown. $14; must be 21 or older to attend. (619) 795-1337, musicboxsd.com
Poncho Sanchez, with Gaby & La Buena Onda
A 2013 Latin Grammy Award Lifetime Achievement Award honoree, Texas-born Sanchez got his professional start in San Diego in 1975, when he played a weeklong residency at Tom Ham’s Lighthouse as the then-youngest member of Latin-jazz mainstay Cal Tjader’s group.
With his 50th anniversary in music only a year away, this Norwalk-raised conga great is still drumming up a storm.
Sanchez now has 27 albums to his credit. The most recent, 2019’s “Trane’s Delight,” features his propulsive reinventions of classics by John Coltrane, Duke Ellington, Joe Cuba and Bobby Manrique.
Expect the dance floor to be packed, nonstop, when Sanchez and his band play here this weekend.
8 p.m. Saturday. The Music Box, 1337 India St., downtown. $40; must be 21 or older to attend. (619) 795-1337; musicboxsd.com