IU Jacobs School of Music presents 'Jazz Celebration -- A Tribute to Cole Porter', April 20
WHAT: "Jazz Celebration -- A Tribute to Cole Porter"
WHEN: 8 p.m. Saturday, April 20
WHERE: IU's Musical Arts Center, 101 N. Jordan Ave.
TICKETS: $10-$25 reserved seating, $8 for students at the Musical Arts Center Box Office (812-855-7433) 11:30 a.m.-5:30 p.m. Monday-Friday or online at music.indiana.edu/boxoffice. Bursar billing is available for students.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
March 8, 2013
BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- The Indiana University Jacobs School of Music will present its annual Jazz Celebration at 8 p.m. on Saturday, April 20, in Bloomington's Musical Arts Center with a significant tribute to Indiana legend Cole Porter. The event is the first in a series of annual concerts that will focus on the impressive legacy of the art form in the state and coincides with the nationally celebrated Jazz Appreciation Month of April.
Guest vocalist Sunny Wilkinson will join Tim Noble, IU distinguished professor of voice, and several Jacobs School student and faculty ensembles for the celebration. The variety of ensembles performing includes a big band, strings, the school's Vocal Jazz Ensemble, a jazz faculty combo, a student piano trio and the Latin Jazz Ensemble.
Wilkinson has sung with such musical icons as The Count Basie Orchestra, Rob McConell and the Boss Brass, Clark Terry, Mark Murphy, Milt Hinton, Curtis Fuller and many more. She has released four CDs as a leader, her latest being a duo project featuring Los Angeles-based pianist Tom Garvin, "A Gentle Time -- When Sunny Meets Tom." She began her career in Los Angeles, singing jazz and recording for movies and television, and subsequently developed a career as an educator, teaching jazz voice at Michigan State University, presenting vocal jazz workshops at universities across the United States and co-founding the Sisters in Jazz mentorship program for young jazz women through the International Association for Jazz Education.
Tim Noble
In addition to being one of the world's leading operatic bass-baritones, with an international career spanning 44 years, IU Distinguished Professor of Voice Tim Noble has a special connection to Cole Porter -- both he and the jazz legend grew up in Peru, Ind. Noble's musical recordings range from the Cole Porter CD "Simply Porter" to his performance as Harold Hill on the Telarc recording of "The Music Man" with Erich Kunzel and the Cincinnati Pops Orchestra, for which he received a Grammy nomination.
Several other Jacobs faculty will perform in the concert, including Steve Houghton, Brent Wallarab, Michael Spiro, Tom Walsh, Joey Tartell, Pat Harbison, Jeremy Allen and Luke Gillespie.
Jazz Celebration will include several classic Porter songs, many of them in specially created arrangements by Brent Wallarab and Wilkinson's husband, pianist/arranger Ron Newman. Concertgoers can look forward to hearing well-known favorites such as "Night and Day," "In the Still of the Night" and "Anything Goes" in addition to some lesser-known tunes by the composer such as "I Concentrate on You" and "At Long Last Love."
As a bonus, the IU Jazz Quartet will perform in the Musical Arts Center Lobby at 7:15 p.m., just back from its performance at California's Monterey Next Generation Festival. The quartet features Matt MacDougall, guitar; Matt Peterson, piano; Anna Butterss, bass; and Josh Roberts, drums.
Public Radio WFIU will join in the celebration of Indiana jazz by rebroadcasting its four-part series "Jazz Crossroads of America" Fridays in April at 10 p.m. on "Night Lights," hosted by David Brent Johnson.
