Alchemist Quintet

Alchemist Quintet at Bird & Beckett features a Bay Area band built around violinist Michele Walther and saxophonist Michael Gold, playing mostly original music that draws on bebop, Indian classical music, Eastern European harmony and even medieval English dance. Walther, a San Francisco violinist with a master’s from the Basel Conservatory and a jazz performance degree from Berklee, has played with Joe Lovano, Gloria Estefan and Jethro Tull’s Ian Anderson, and holds chairs in the Musical Art Quintet, Jazz Mafia Strings and Los Tangueros del Oeste; Gold, son of the RCA arranger and bandleader Marty Gold, leads his own quartet and is a former editor of Strings magazine. They’re joined by pianist John Kiskaddon, bassist Ted Burik, who has played jazz across four decades in New York, Los Angeles, Seattle and the Bay Area, and drummer Greg German. The quintet self-released its debut album, Ghost Radio, last December.