SUNDAY DAYDREAM: Celebrating the Grateful Dead

A jazz project playing the music of the Grateful Dead, presented at Fitzgeralds Nightclub in Berwyn. This is a tribute, not a performance by the Grateful Dead.

Sunday Daydream is a jazz project that reinterprets the repertoire of the Grateful Dead, the rock band formed in 1965 in the San Francisco Bay Area and built around Jerry Garcia, Bob Weir, Phil Lesh, and Bill Kreutzmann. The Dead's catalog includes the albums Workingman's Dead and American Beauty, both released in 1970, and songs such as "Truckin'," "Ripple," and "Sugar Magnolia." Sunday Daydream performs these songs in its own jazz arrangements.

The Dead's concerts featured extended improvisation that moved between blues, folk, country, and psychedelic rock. That open-ended approach gives jazz musicians a clear point of entry into the material, which is why a jazz reading of the band's songs suits listeners who know the originals as well as those who come to the music through jazz.

Fitzgeralds Nightclub in Berwyn hosts concerts and shows. This evening is aimed at Grateful Dead fans curious about jazz interpretations of their songs, and at jazz listeners interested in the rock repertoire that shaped the band's long-form improvisation.