The Jazz at the Athenaeum summer series opens with the all-star NYC-based Vincent Herring Quartet, featuring Herring on alto saxophone, Dave Kikoski on piano, Yasushi Nakamura on bass, and Carl Allen on drums. Vincent Herring is widely regarded as one of the wo rld’s foremost voices on alto saxophone and earned his spot in the jazz pantheon playing alongside legends such as Dizzy Gillespie, Art Blakey, Nat Adderley, and Freddie Hubbard. Herring’s playing and writing express a deep understanding of the blues and straight-ahead bop, but can easily shift gears into the type of expressive and forceful playing associated with 1960s John Coltrane or Eric Dolphy. Supported by his rhythm section of top NYC-based jazzmen, Herring brings his diverse bop and post-bop influences together in a precise and swinging quartet.