Summer Jazz Night featuring Deborah Thurlow & The Leo Johnson Quartet

Stay cool with cocktails and jazz at a 1920s speakeasy turned arts club in historic Ditmas Park. 

The founder of Turn on the Music, Deborah Thurlow, developed her vision and mission to create a futuristic chamber music ensemble with a core instrumentation of horn, violin, electric guitar, and electric bass. This Instrumentation is augmented with the occasional addition of other electronically processed acoustic instruments and computer music in the mix, creating a variety of ensemble settings. Deborah Thurlow has 3 recordings to her credit with this ensemble, I am, Patchworks and The Darwin Effect (Grammy Consideration – 2008).

Saxophonist Leo Johnson has performed throughout Europe and the U.S. including Birdland in New York City.  He recorded and produced two CD's Leo Johnson- It's About Time and Message To Mankind. He led his own ensembles through the poignant compositions and arrangements he authored. With an ear open to new talent, Leo has helped to develop young artists who are prominent in today’s jazz scene. Victor Jones, Terrance Blanchard, Andy McCloud, Alan Watson, Michael Clark, Ralph Peterson, the Harper Brothers, the late Woody Shaw and the late David Eubanks are some of the musicians who have participated and developed their talents with the milieu of Leo’s ensemble.

He received three individual proclamations from Mayors Kenneth Gibson and Sharpe James in recognition of his contribution to the arts in Newark, and a fourth as one of Newark's "Jazz Elders from Governor John Corzine.