WSU Jazz Concert to Feature Award Winners, New Compositions

PULLMAN, Wash. — A concert featuring the Washington State University
VOJAZZ vocal jazz ensemble and the WSU Jazz Big Band is set for April 4 on
the WSU campus.

The 8 p.m. program will be held in Bryan Hall Auditorium and is open to the
public without charge.

VOJAZZ, directed by Horace-Alexander Young, opens the concert. Soloists
include vocalists Julie Silvera-Jensen and Eliot Thompson, both first place
winners at the 2000 Lionel Hampton Jazz Festival. The program includes two
new compositions: “Island Dance,” winner of the Hampton Jazz Festival vocal
composition competition and composed by WSU graduate teaching assistant
Gus Kambeitz, and “Bailemos!” composed by graduate teaching assistant Eric
Skidmore.

The Jazz Big Band, directed by Gregory Yasinitsky, coordinator of WSU jazz
studies, will present the premiere of Kambeitz’s “Hermans Blooze.” The
program also includes a new arrangement of “Softly as In a Morning Sunrise”
by Charles Argersinger, coordinator of theory and composition. Soloists will
include drummer Brian Wright, also a first-place winner at the Hampton Jazz
Festival; bassist Kambeitz; trumpeter Joe Potter; and saxophonists Scott
Ryckman and Jeremy Hamilton.

The concert concludes with a joint performance of “A Beautiful Friendship” by
VOJAZZ and the big band.

Sh139-00

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