Jazz musicians from USC set to perform at UCLA for CAC concert series

The crosstown rivalry will be put aside for a night of music as two groups consisting primarily of USC alumni get ready to perform at UCLA.

Tonight, jazz groups Moonchild and WILBERTA will perform during the soul and jazz night at Kerckhoff Coffeehouse as part of the Cultural Affairs Commission’s concert series.

In addition to sharing the same alma mater, the members of both bands found inspiration for their groups’ names in unlikely places.

The members of WILBERTA – saxophonist Daniel Richardson, guitarists Michael McTaggart and Brandon Bae, bassist Jonathan Richards, drummer Jonathan Pinson and vocalist Dustin Warren – started WILBERTA about six months ago, although Richardson, McTaggart and Warren graduated from USC in 2010, followed by Bae in 2011. At first, they had all played together under different names before finally uniting under one.

“The name kind of started out as a joke, but it actually is my mother’s name and the band wanted to adopt it,” Richardson said. “My mother’s name is Wilberta, and we kind of (took) it from there.”

For Moonchild, the band also has equally unexpected origins. Andris Mattson, a fourth-year jazz student at USC, said he and his fellow Moonchild members like to stargaze while on tour. When it came to the band name, they looked to the skies for inspiration (literally), leading to the group’s celestial name.

Mattson said that he met his Moonchild bandmates, Amber Navran and Max Bryk, while they were all studying jazz performance at USC. Navran said that the three musicians officially came together as Moonchild during the summer of 2011, and have since opened for Stevie Wonder at a benefit concert.

“It was a big surprise for us. Stevie Wonder owns a radio station in LA (102.3) and somehow one of the radio DJs from that station came across our YouTube videos and liked them,” Navran said. “Stevie was in the studio on Thursday, the night before the benefit concert, and (the DJ) showed Stevie the music.”

Mattson said the group members will perform songs from their EP, “Be Free,” which was released in late April 2012, as well as some material they have been working on for their new album, which they said they hope to release in May.

Mattson also said Moonchild’s main influences are D’Angelo and Erykah Badu, whose sounds and lyrics are often an inspiration when the group is working on original material.

“(Badu) is who all three of us listen to the most, and we were listening to her when writing that song (‘Be Free’),” Mattson said. “I guess we would describe our sound as sort of neo-soul, but more electronic and bass stuff as well.”

Richards said that WILBERTA also experiments with its sound, since its members studied the genre in school, but the group’s influences also include other types of artists such as Radiohead, Little Dragon and Jimi Hendrix. WILBERTA’s music also includes some improvisations on traditional jazz as well as rock.

“The overall sound is a combination of a lot of jazz (sounds) and a lot of rock elements,” Richards said. “I take the approach of jazz writing, but then incorporate a lot of indie elements.”

Richards also said he, Richardson and McTaggart all went to the Los Angeles County High School for the Arts together, and they have also known Pinson since high school as well. He met the rest of the WILBERTA members while he was a student at USC.

Richards said WILBERTA is looking forward to playing for a younger audience, since jazz is often received by an older demographic.

“We wanted to play music that was suited for a younger audience. … All the music we write spans a lot of genres,” Richards said. “We wanted to take the sounds and textures that we’ve heard and channel that into a group.”

The members of WILBERTA also said they’re eager to see the reaction of a UCLA audience that has never heard their music before. And while both groups have connections to USC, music will be the focus of the night.

“In the music community there is no barrier,” Mattson said.