Key Elements Latin Jazz Ensemble returns to The Annex Sessions, brought to you by SunJams and Javier Navarrette

“The Annex Sessions" Wednesday, September 24, 2025, 6-8:30 PM will continue our music series held at El Cerrito Natural Grocery Company Prepared Food Annex (The Annex) with

Key Elements Latin Jazz Ensemble

Inés Vargas Fraenkel - Peruvian singer/percussionist

Patricia Thumas – keyboards

Cynthia Mah – saxophone/flute

Sue “Suki” Kaye – percussion

Sylvia Sherman – bass guitar

Joyce Baker - drums

Key Elements Latin Jazz Ensemble is comprised of some of the SF Bay Area’s most seasoned instrumentalists and Peruvian Singer/Percussionist, Inés Vargas Fraenkel, who together perform

exceptional original and Latin Brazilian classics for your listening and dancing pleasure. Their music has a fresh, new vibrant flair with infectious exotic rhythms to enchant you with!

Inés Vargas Fraenkel

Inés was born in Peru of Peruvian-Chinese descent. She has lived in the Bay Area since her family immigrated to the US. She is now retired from being an attorney for the cities of Oakland and San Francisco. 

Latin music and dance have been her passions. She is a percussionist and vocalist. She plays bongos and hand percussion, and has been a vocalist of Latin and salsa tunes for over 15 years. She has performed with a number of Bay Area bands, some of them, all-women bands. She now performs with Key Elements Latin Jazz Ensemble.

Patricia Thumas

Patricia Thumas is a native San Franciscan, who emerged as the Bay Area's first female Salsa pianist with the highly acclaimed "Ritmo '74" , opening for the international stars of New York-based Fania Records label at many of San Francisco's finest venues. She has had an extensive career as a Salsa Pianist, including working with John Santos' late seventies Cuban Charanga band "Tipica Cienfuegos", and was also a member of legendary Afro-Cuban Master Drummer Francisco Aguabella's band. In the early 1980s, she formed part of Escola de Samba Batucaje, directed by Jose Lorenzo, which won first place in Carnaval. In the late 1980s she toured throughout the California State Department of Correction System with Jazz Guitarist Eddie Duran & Saxophonist Madeline Duran's Band. Later in the 1980s/early 1990s, she toured nationally and recorded 2 CDs with the internationally acclaimed "Blazing Redheads” on the Reference Records label. In the late seventies/eighties, she co-led " Chevere" & "Bahia", both Latin &

Brazilian jazz ensembles. From 1994-2002 she played piano with the "Julio Bravo & Salsabor Orchestra", performing locally & nationally, and is a twenty-five year veteran of "El Grupo Sinigual”. Patricia was selected and served as a Judge for the 2017 SF Carnaval Parade. She is

featured in Jim McCarthy's book "Voices of Latin Rock.” She is also featured along with other veteran community artists past & present on a mural at Casa Bandido, located at 25th & York Streets in San Francisco and will soon be featured in a book about the Mission District' s artistic

community.  Since 2017, she has been leading Key Elements Latin Jazz Ensemble which recorded its debut album, “Arrival” in 2020.  Also in 2020, she was commissioned to create a song about a Mission District Mural, leading to the composition, “Maestra”.  The same year she was commissioned by Music in Place to write a composition inspired by the Pandemic entitled "Next Chapter". In 2021/2022 Patricia was commissioned by Jazz In The Neighborhood to perform Livestream concerts at Oakland Public Conservatory with Key Elements.  In 2022 she was a Yerba Buena Center For The Arts grant recipient for Sustainability during Pandemic.  She also was featured in Holly Near’s Digital Archive/Gallery about the history of women’s music.

Cynthia Mah

Cynthia Mah is a native Bay Area multi-instrumentalist who got an early start in music taking piano lessons from her mother’s lap and classes at the East Bay Center for Performing Arts. Playing music for the pure joy of it, she has performed at Yoshi’s, the Freight & Salvage, SF Jazz,

the California Jazz Conservatory, the National Women’s Music Festival and Ashkenaz in genres as diverse as big band jazz, R&B, Funk, harmonica ensemble, body music, Brazilian choro and Latin jazz.  Cynthia is currently a member of several bands including small jazz combos, the UC Alumni Big Band, Tin Sandwich, Melba’s Kitchen (all woman tribute big band honoring the music of Melba Liston and Mary Lou Williams) and Key Elements Latin Jazz Ensemble.

Sue “Suki” Kaye

Sue "Suki" Kaye, originally from NYC and now living in the Bay Area has been playing congas, ngoma, kalimba, and other percussion for over 40 years. She has been deeply influenced by many amazing teachers, studying the music of the Congo, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Brazil, Trinidad

and more! Over the years, Suki has performed with many bands, including Azucar con Ache, Rita Lackey and Friends, Liquid Girlfriend, Montuno Groove, Omeyocan, Pura Vida, Zakiya Hooker, Bole Bantu, Azucar y Crema, Samba Ngo, and the Ngoma Players, and is now very

excited about playing with this new project-Key Elements. She has had the pleasure of opening the show and sharing the stage with such well-known artists as King Sunny Ade, Sheila E, and Babatunde Olatunji (RIP). Suki has also been a dance accompanist, playing for both classes and performance groups. She is a former member of Taller Bombalele, a Puerto Rican Folkloric group. She is also an educator, teaching elementary, preschool, and after school programs as well as conducting drum workshops for adults and kids. She is on the faculty of Born to Drum, a Bay Area women's drum camp. Suki also enjoys writing and arranging music and of course playing and being creative with other musicians!

Sylvia Sherman

Sylvia Sherman is an alumna from community arts workshops at La Pena Cultural Center and Mission Cultural Center, with a focus on percussion in Cuban music, including opportunities to participate in clinics with master Cuban artists such as Los Muñequitos de Matanzas and Anga Diaz and to study with Bay Area based Michael Spiro and Jesus Diaz.  She brings her experience with percussion to her bass playing and performs with several groups including Key Elements, El

Guajiro, Ray Martinez and the Latin OGs and Sinigual.  Sylvia is Program Director at Community Music Center where she works to develop community arts programs for people of all ages.

Joyce Baker

Joyce Baker has been playing drums since she was a small child with her famous father “Buddy” Baker. Joyce has played with Lavender Country for many years and recently at SXSW; as well other greats such as Emmy Award Winning Songwriter Lisa Nemzo, Mel Graves, George Marsh, Opie Bellas, Lea DeLaria, Carolyn Brandy, Michaelle Goerlitz, Vicky Grossi, Janice Beard, Mimi Fox and the Cable Car Award Recipients Nicholas Glover and Wray. Joyce has also shared the

stage with Con Fun Shun, Jefferson Starship, and ”Blondie’s” Debra Harry. Over the years, she has also been seen and heard with Theatre companies Contra Costa Theatre, Hootchie Doo Productions “Nunsense” series, orchestras with Sonoma Valley Chorale, Contare Con Vivo, and Oakland East Bay Symphony. Joyce is a recording artist and can be heard on multiple CD’s with Amy Meyers, Liquid Girlfriend, Doug Stevens and The Outband, Nicholas, Glover and Wray, D. Anthony, Bad Ass Boots, “Gotta Give me Somethin’,” and Lavender Country’s guitarist Mark Newstetter. By day she is an award winning music teacher in OUSD, and Jazz and Blues Camp for Girls @ the Berkeley Jazz School. By night she can be heard with Lavender Country, Bad Ass Boots, Big O’, Mary Lou’s Apartment, and her own swinging jazz group. Otherwise, she lives with her lovely wife of 29 years, the best dog in the world, Santita, her cat, Sir Lumley, in her hideway home in the hills of El Sobrante.

https://keyelementslatinjazz.com/

The Natural Grocery Company is proud to present this series in partnership with SunJams and Javier
Navarrette Music Productions.

SunJams  is committed to funding children's music education in underserved public elementary schools. Your donation will help support this ongoing program.
All of the proceeds will go directly to our network of local musicians, each of whom have been severely impacted by the lack of events during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Whether you donate $10, $100, or $1000 - any amount helps and will allow us to keep bringing music to our community! As always, your donation to SunJams 501(c)3 may qualify as tax exempt.

Javier Navarrette Music Productions continues to bring live music to several venues around the Bay Area. Javier has been a professional musician and music educator in the Oakland Unified School District for the past 20 years. Over the past few years Navarrette has produced outdoors events that have proven instrumental in enabling musicians to deal with some of the fallout of the pandemic and shutdown that followed.

 Follow Javier Navarrette on Facebook , Instagram and YouTube. 

COVID RELATED SAFETY MEASURES
Please be safe. Feel free to wear a mask if you prefer.

TICKETS

Tickets are encouraged, we are happy to offer you a reserved seat (limited seating available) if you RSVP with a donation that will go towards paying for the music. Tickets are NOT required for this venue, you can simply come in, order food and beverages at the Annex counter. 

The Annex 

The Annex is a lively space for shopping, dining and relaxing. As the newest part of The Natural Grocery Company, the values are the same: a passion for vibrant community, healthy organic food and respect for the planet. 

"The Annex Sessions" is sponsored by the Natural Grocery Company in its commitment to serve the local community and help in the recovery of the local art scene. 

Open for breakfast, lunch and dinner 7 days a week, inside the Annex you’ll find: A Cafe, Juice Bar, Deli, Wine & Beer, and more.

The Annex building itself embodies our values: a few of the sustainable features are: extensive re-use of materials from the pre-existing structure, use of recycled materials from local vendors, and reliance on the solar energy we produce here, supplemented with other clean energy sources.

DONATIONS

SunJams is committed to funding children's music education in underserved public elementary schools. Your donation will help support this ongoing program. 

In addition, we need to raise funds to continue bringing you this exciting new ( launched in April 2022) live music program. All of the proceeds will go directly to our network of local musicians, each of whom have been severely impacted by the lack of events during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Whether you donate $10, $100, or $1000 - any amount helps and will allow us to keep bringing music to our community! As always, your donation to our 501(c)3 may qualify as tax exempt. 

Please DONATE HERE

DURING THE SHOW

We will be taking cash or check donations at check-in, during intermission & at the end of the show. 

TIME

The Annex is open every day, please check their website for hours (https://naturalgrocery.com/annex/).


The show will begin at 6:00 PM and conclude by 8:30 PM.