Brazilian bossa nova legend Marcos Valle brings the Jazz Is Dead series to The UC Theatre in Berkeley on July 28 — with Fabiano do Nascimento — but the $35 show sold out. Here's the situation for ticket-hunters and what ticketholders should know before they walk in.

Marcos Valle and guitarist Fabiano do Nascimento play The UC Theatre, 2036 University Ave., Berkeley, this Tuesday, July 28 — doors 7 p.m., show 8 p.m. Tickets were $35 plus fees. They're gone. The Jazz Is Dead series, co-presented here by KALW and promoter ArtDontSleep, has a habit of selling out rooms before casual fans notice the show is on.

The why matters: Valle is a Brazilian composer and singer whose catalog of bossa nova, samba, and jazz-inflected Música Popular Brasileira became foundational source material for decades of hip-hop. The Jazz Is Dead label — run by producer Adrian Younge and Ali Shaheed Muhammad, a founding member of A Tribe Called Quest — has spent 25 albums giving those artists their due: analog-recorded, improvisation-forward sessions that bridge crate-digging culture with the musicians who actually built it. Their collaboration with Valle, JID003, was his first album recorded in the U.S. in nearly 50 years — and the closest thing to a pure jazz record in his catalog, cut on tape at Younge's Linear Labs Studio to replicate 1960s and '70s production methods. Muhammad on what it was like in the room: "A couple of songs he sat down in the moment and wrote some lyrics about what was actually happening, and that's how free and open he is."

The numbers back it. Jazz Is Dead moved 3,000 tickets in Los Angeles for a Cortex show — a French jazz-funk band most people know only from record bins. Same pull sold out Berkeley. The series' next UC Theatre date, Jazz Is Dead: Cortex, is September 18, $50 plus fees — also sold out.

Still trying to get in: Resale is the only path. The UC Theatre recommends public transit — Downtown Berkeley BART is about a 10-minute walk west on University Ave. Street parking on University competes with the Tuesday restaurant crowd; skip the car.

Already have a ticket: Fabiano do Nascimento isn't throwaway support. The L.A.-based Brazilian guitarist carries his own following in MPB and contemporary jazz circles. Arrive at 7 p.m. and treat it as a two-artist night worth catching from the first note.