Francis Vanek Quartet

Francis Vanek is a saxophone virtuoso and jazz educator first noted in Humboldt County in the early 1990s as a featured performer at the Redwood Jazz Revue and in duo with Teddy Taylor. Times-Standard archives document him leaving the Humboldt area in 1992 for the University of Nevada, Reno, where he was hired by Larry Engstrom as sax instructor and helped build the UNR jazz program and faculty quintet The Collective. He continues to perform on the North Coast, including regular appearances at The Basement in Arcata and the Sequoia Room at North Coast Brewing in Fort Bragg as the Francis Vanek Quartet / Francis Vanek & Co.