Jazz ensemble’s concert highlights standards, greats

ORONO – The University of Maine Chamber Jazz Ensemble will present its annual formal concert at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 4, in the Leonard and Renee Minsky Recital Hall, Class of 1944 Hall.

The organization is composed of several soloists and small ensembles with piano accompaniment. This semester’s group consists of nine musicians representing a variety of instruments, according to music professor Karel Lidral, who directs the ensemble. The ensemble is open to student instrumentalists at all levels.

Membership in the Chamber Jazz Ensemble is a major component of the minor in jazz studies at UMaine, and members learn about both the art of jazz improvisation and that other “salient aspect of jazz, swing feeling,” Lidral says.

The concert program will include great jazz standards and originals from jazz greats, including Charlie Parker, Red Garland, McCoy Tyner, Nat Adderley, Horace Silver, Antonio Carlos Jobim, Miles Davis, Horace Silver, Sonny Rollins, Du Bose and Dorothy Hayward, and George and Ira Gershwin.

Student ensemble performers are Ray DeLear, soprano saxophone, Corinth; Adam Mullen, guitar, Brewer; John Brushie, piano, Surry; John Brabant, alto saxophone, Presque Isle; Ashley Drew, tenor saxophone, Scarborough; Anna-Marlies Hunter, clarinet, Limestone; Skye Landry, trumpet, Oxford; Alisa Rhodes, tenor saxophone, of Rockford, Ill.; and Bryant Sirois, guitar, Caribou.

Tickets are $6. UMaine students with a MaineCard are admitted free. More information is available through the Maine Center for the Arts Box Office at 581-1755, or online at www.umaine.edu/spa.

The ensemble also will perform on Wednesday, Dec. 3, in the “Jazz Corner” of Union Central in the Memorial Union. The event is free and open to the public.