Mike Sailors, an Austin-based jazz trumpeter, arranger and composer, performs live at Monks Jazz.
Mike Sailors brings his quintet to Monks Jazz on Thursday, September 24, at 7:30 PM. Sailors is an Austin-based jazz trumpeter, arranger, and composer who originally hails from Charleston, South Carolina. He's been leading the Jazz Trumpet Studio at The University of Texas Butler School of Music since 2019, so if you've got kids in the program, you've likely already run into him.
Before he settled in Austin, Sailors spent years on the road and in the pits. He's played the Blue Note in Tokyo, Sapporo, and New York, as well as Dizzy's Club Coca-Cola, Carnegie Hall, Yoshi's, and the Bowery Ballroom. He's also appeared at some of the bigger jazz festivals: Tokyo Blue Note, EFG London, Detroit, Newport, and Montreal. As a sideman, he's worked with the Birdland Big Band, Bobby Sanabria, The Multiverse Orchestra, the Hot Sardines, and the Captain Black Big Band led by Orrin Evans, and has performed alongside the Gerald Wilson Orchestra, Jon Hendricks, Dick Oatts, and Wycliffe Gordon.
There's a Broadway side to his career too. He played trumpet in Beautiful: The Carole King Story, Be More Chill, and The Prom, and served as music director for Sleep No More from 2014 to 2017. That mix of big-band, festival, and theater work is a good shorthand for the kind of musician he is—equally comfortable in a tight ensemble or leading his own group.
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On the night, it's the Mike Sailors Quintet taking the stage, so you'll get a full band around his trumpet. The show is at Monks Jazz, 310 E Saint Elmo Road, Unit B, in South Austin, starting at 7:30 PM on Thursday, September 24.
