|
contents | jazz | |||||||||||||
| Jack Kleinsinger Announces Highlights In Jazz 2016 44th Season Jack Kleinsinger's Highlights In Jazz, New York's longest running jazz concert series, proudly announces the schedule for its 44th season featuring four monthly star-studded Thursday night concerts taking place at the Tribeca Performing Arts Center of Borough of Manhattan Community College, 199 Chambers Street, NYC 10010. Each show begins at 8:00 PM. The season kicks off on February 4, 2016 with Highlights In Jazz 43rd Anniversary Gala featuring the swinging jazz and blues of vocalist Catherine Russell and her band in an encore Highlights In Jazz appearance following the singer's enthusiastically received 2015 Highlights debut. Kleinsinger notes, "The response was so terrific that we decided to have her open again this year. She is jazz royalty. Her mother, Carline Ray, a great bass player, appeared for us many times. And her father was Luis Russell, who was of course the orchestra leader of the band that Louis Armstrong eventually took over." Russell's wide ranging repertoire of jazz and blues classics is one that the audience is sure to find satisfying. Sharing the bill with Ms. Russell and her band will be a stellar group of Highlights In Jazz regulars, including a front line of cornetist/trumpeter Warren Vaché, who will be making his seventh Highlights In Jazz appearance and saxophonist-clarinetist Scott Robinson, who will be returning to Highlights for the 3rd time. They'll be backed by a swinging trio featuring pianist Ted Rosenthal, drummer Alvester Garnett and a very special surprise guest a staple of all Highlights In Jazz concerts. The season's second concert on Thursday, March 3, 2016 will be a Salute to Paquito D'Rivera, who will be honored as the year's recipient of the Annual Highlights In Jazz Award which has been presented every year since 1974 to honor a singular living jazz musician for their "matchless musical achievements." Previous honorees have been Roy Eldridge, Lionel Hampton, Roy Haynes, Hank Jones, Frank Wess, Dr. Billy Taylor and many other jazz luminaries. Kleinsinger proudly recalls that alto saxophonist/clarinetist D'Rivera, who will be making his fourth Highlights In Jazz appearance, originally performed on the series back in 1984 when he first arrived in the US from his native Cuba, on a program billed Jazz Is My Passport that also featured Brazilian songstress Astrud Gilberto and French harmonica legend Toots Theilemans. This show will have D'Rivera performing with his working quintet featuring Argentine trumpeter Diego Urcola, pianist Alex Brown, bassist Zak Brown, and drummer Erik Doob, as well as part of a Clarinet Summit with previous Highlights In Jazz Award recipient Ken Peplowski and twin brother reed men Will and Peter Anderson, who appeared together on Highlights' successful Saxophone Summit concert earlier this year. The Thursday, May 12th concert will present Highlights In Jazz Audience Favorites, bringing together seven of the series most popular artists, including previous Highlights In Jazz Award Winners guitarist Bucky Pizzarelli and trombonist Wycliffe Gordon. The pair will be joined by trumpeter/vocalist Bria Skonberg, guitarist Frank Vignola, bassist/vocalist Nicki Parrott, drummer Alvin Atkinson, and making her first official Highlights In Jazz appearance, vocalist Alexis Cole. Kleinsinger proclaims, "She was a surprise guest last year and the audience loved her, so I wanted to bring her back." With such a versatile cast of artists on hand Kleinsinger will be putting his many years of experience producing concerts to good use, mixing and matching up different combinations to feature each performer. The veteran presenter asserts, "We're going to have fun with this one. Anything can happen!". The season concludes on Thursday, June 16th with Trio Time, a double bill pairing the Dick Hyman Trio and Trio Da Paz. Hyman, a perennial Highlights headliner, will be making his 23rd appearance. Kleinsinger notes, "He appeared at the second Highlights In Jazz concert, has been subject of a salute and has been on more programs then any other keyboard artist." Filling out the unit will be regularly returning players, bassist Jay Leonhart and guitarist Howard Alden. Trio Da Paz, the critically acclaimed Brazilian threesome of drummer Duduka Da Fosenca, guitarist Romero Lubambo and bassist Nilson Matta fills out the program. Along with, of course, a special surprise guest chosen from among the music's finest players. Some of the biggest stars in jazz who have appeared as surprise guests in previous years have been Eubie Blake, Cab Calloway, Dizzy Gillespie, Savion Glover, Earl Hines, Branford Marsalis, Carmen McRae, Gerry Mulligan, George Shearing and many others. Kleinsinger says of the season's offerings, "We do a mainstream series. It's Dixieland, it's swing, it's Bebop. It may not be the most progressive or forward looking series and we don't try to be. We've defined our audience and their taste and for the most part I try to give them what they want. It's been successful for us for forty-three years and I'm not about to stop doing it." All Shows At BMCC TRIBECA Performing Arts Center Borough of Manhattan Community College 199 Chambers Street, New York, NY 10007 write your comments about the article :: © 2015 Jazz News :: home page |