Spyro Gyra at The Lyric

When saxophone player Jay Beckenstein was at the University of Buffalo, he majored in biology before switching to music performance. One biology lesson stuck: he remembered a freshwater green alga with spiral bands of chloroplasts. He and childhood friend Jeremy Walls settled in Buffalo after graduation and began jamming with other musicians on Tuesday nights. They called those evenings Tuesday Night Jazz Jams. When their popularity rose and they added a high-schooler named Tom Schuman to join them, club owners insisted on a real name. Beckenstein remembered that biology lesson and called the group Spyro Gyra.

Now more than 40 years later, Spyro Gyra has performed more than 5,000 shows, released 31 albums, and sold more than 10 million of them. They have one platinum and two gold albums. They could rest on their laurels, but they don’t. Beckenstein and his pals, Julio Fernandez, Joel Rosenblatt, Scott Ambush and Tom Schuman are still having too much fun and touching audiences.