Article San Diego Union-Tribune WHAT GOES AROUND Feierabend comes back to his roots for a gig at Dizzy'sBy Andrew Gilbert January 9, 2003 [SOUNDSLIKESANDIEGO] San Diego native Steve Feierabend has left his hometown a number of times to pursue his ongoing passion for jazz. But the respected tenor saxophonist's latest move was motivated by a different kind of ardor. Last August, he settled in Berkeley after marrying Dr. Amy Gordon, a family practitioner who works in the low-income community of West Berkeley. Feierabend plays at Dizzy's on Saturday with pianist Ivar Antonsen, bassist Bill Andrews and drummer Duncan Moore. It will be his first San Diego performance since leaving six months ago. "We met when I was doing a gig up here in San Mateo about a year and a half ago, a Norwegian cultural festival, and I was playing with Ivar," said Feierabend, 41. "Amy came to the show with my sister, who's also a doctor, and I think she had some intention about setting us up." The marriage precipitated the move, which brought Feierabend to the Bay Area in the wake of the high-tech meltdown. After several years of seemingly endless high-rolling good times, the region's jazz scene has frayed badly as restaurants booking jazz have cut back, and lucrative corporate gigs have evaporated. Still, Feierabend has found a steady flow of work, playing in salsa and Latin jazz combos, and subbing in the Monday night big band at Jazz at Pearl's, the leading North Beach jazz spot. He's also impressed a number of veteran players, like trombonist Jules Rowell and master drummer Akira Tana, who settled back in the Bay Area after years in New York co-leading the acclaimed Tana Reid band with bassist Rufus Reid. Steeped in the bebop tradition, Feierabend has an affinity for the kind of minor key tunes that John Coltrane used to such expressive effect. "Steve's a soft-spoken and very laid-back person, but his playing on tenor and musical expression have fire and intensity," Tana wrote in an e-mail from Japan, where he was on tour. "He's very rooted in the tradition ... but can stretch the boundaries willingly at the drop of a cymbal crash." It also doesn't hurt that Feierabend has an impressive calling card in his latest CD, "Revolving Doors" on Webster's Last Word, a label run by Dizzy's owner Chuck Perrin. Alternating between two different bands, a quartet with Antonsen and a quintet with guitarist Peter Sprague, the album showcases both Feierabend's hard-swinging, fluent tenor work and formidable writing skills. The product of a small but vital North County jazz scene that developed in the early and mid-'70s, Feierabend came of age inspired by players a few years older, like pianist Rob Schneiderman and Peter and Tripp Sprague. A graduate of Torry Pines High School, he first left San Diego in 1979 to study at Boston's Berklee College of Music. Upon returning to Southern California, he gained attention with his Common Grounds quartet, a superb band featuring pianist Randy Porter that recorded the album "Manhattan Fantasy" (Time Is Records). He made another East Coast sojourn in the mid-'90s, earning a master's degree in jazz performance from Rutgers University, where he worked closely with some of the greatest jazz musicians in the world. "I wanted another infusion of East Coast energy," Feierabend said. "I ended up 45 minutes from Manhattan, studying with people like Kenny Barron and saxophonist Ralph Bowen, who's an amazing teacher. Except for a couple of history classes, all my work was on saxophone and piano, playing from morning until I went to sleep. I felt like I reached a totally new level." With his move to Berkeley, Feierabend has taken his life to a new level too. Andrew Gilbert is a Bay Area writer. The Feierabend/Antonsen Quartet 8:45 p.m. Saturday January 11th 2003 Dizzy's, 344 Seventh Ave., East Village; $10; (858) 270-7467 Copyright 2003 Union-Tribune Publishing Co.