Benny Benack III brings his trumpet and voice to The Century Room on Dec. 26

The Emmy-nominated trumpeter-singer plays Hotel Congress's jazz room the night after Christmas — an early-evening set in a room built for exactly this.

The day after Christmas is usually a dead zone: leftovers, returns lines, relatives still on the couch. This year Tucson has a better plan. Benny Benack III plays The Century Room on Saturday, Dec. 26, at 6:30 p.m., and the show was announced Oct. 15, which means the clock has been running on a 300-capacity room for a few weeks already.

Tickets are $30–$40 through DICE. The early start puts you back out on Congress Street with the whole evening still ahead, or gives you an excuse to stay for a second round.

Benack is a Pittsburgh-born, New York-based trumpeter and vocalist, and he is one of the rare players who is equally convincing on both. He has been billed as an Emmy-nominated artist, and his résumé reads like a tour of the jazz world's proving grounds: a finalist spot in the 2014 Thelonious Monk Competition, third place at the 2021 Sarah Vaughan Vocal Competition, and placements in DownBeat's Rising Star polls as both a male vocalist and a trumpeter. All About Jazz has profiled him in its "Take Five" series, and presenters keep coming back to the same selling point — a singer who swings like a horn player, and a horn player who phrases like a singer.

He has been busy this year. His calendar has run from a quartet date in Stuttgart to his "Magic of Manhattan" program in Saratoga Springs, a night at Noce, and a two-night sextet stand at Chris' Jazz Café in Philadelphia in October. Next spring he takes "Magic of Manhattan" to the Tilles Center on Long Island in a presentation with Jazz at Lincoln Center. The Century Room date lands right in the middle of that run, which is the kind of booking that keeps Tucson on the national jazz map.

A singer who swings like a horn player, and a horn player who phrases like a singer.

The room matters here. The Century Room opened on Feb. 4, 2022, inside Hotel Congress at 311 E. Congress St., in the space that used to be the Copper Banquet Hall. Founder Arthur Vint built it on what he learned working at Blue Note and Dizzy's in New York, and the layout was modeled on the Village Vanguard, with bench seating along the walls. That is a room designed for listening, which is exactly what a set built on vocalese and trumpet solos needs.

It has also become the backbone of the downtown jazz week. The Century Room Jazz Orchestra holds down Mondays, Wednesdays lean on hot jazz, Sundays bring a jam session, and Fridays and Saturdays are reserved for headliners like this one. If you have only ever caught the house nights, a touring artist on a Saturday is the room at full tilt.

A practical note: 300 seats, a holiday weekend, and an artist with a following among both singers and horn players is not a combination that waits around. If you are hosting family that week, this is the outing that gets everybody out of the house — and back home before anybody gets tired.

Merry Christmas, Tucson. Save the best present for the 26th.

Sources: Take Five with Benny Benack III — All About Jazz (neworleans.allaboutjazz.com); Benny Benack III bio — The Conrad (theconrad.org); Benny Benack III: Emmy-nominated trumpeter, vocalist, composer — Culture HHI (culturehhi.org); Benny Benack III Quartet — Stuttgart (stuttgart.de); Benny Benack III: The Magic of Manhattan — I Love NY (iloveny.com); Noce show detail (noce.turntabletickets.com); Benny Benack III Sextet — Chris' Jazz Café (chrisjazzcafe.com); Benny Benack III: Magic of Manhattan — Tilles Center (tillescenter.org); Hotel Congress — Wikipedia (en.wikipedia.org); The Century Room, Tucson's only jazz club, opens its doors — KGUN 9 (kgun9.com); This Is Tucson — The Century Room (thisistucson.com); The Century Room 3rd anniversary February shows — Visit Tucson (visittucson.org); Benny Benack III at The Century Room — tickets (DICE) (link.dice.fm)