PULLMAN.Matt Finders, trombonist with Kevin Eubanks and the Tonight Show Band, will be the special guest artist for a jazz concert featuring the award-winning WSU Jazz Big Band, directed by Greg Yasinitsky, and VOJAZZ vocal jazz ensemble, directed by Kathleen Hollingsworth, at 8 p.m. Tuesday, April 7, in Bryan Hall Theatre on the WSU Campus. The concert will be free of charge.
Finders has performed with the Tonight Show Band for 16 years. He was invited to join the group by renowned saxophonist Branford Marsalis when Jay Leno took over the show from Johnny Carson. Finders met Marsalis twenty years earlier when the two were members of Clark Terry’s Big Bad Band. Matt has performed and recorded with many of the world’s top musical figures including Natalie Cole, Benny Goodman, Sting, Harry Connick Jr., Toshiko Akiyoshi, Loren Shoenberg, Barbara Morrison, Buck Clayton, Bobby Short, Tito Puente and Blood, Sweat and Tears. In addition to his work on the Tonight Show, Finders is a member of Bob Mintzer’s West Coast Big Band. Also, Matt is a first call studio musician and can be heard in many major motion pictures.
The program will include two Finders originals: “Terilyn’s Dance,” written for his wifein a special new arrangement by Jazz Big Band director Yasinitskyand “Hannah,” written for the trombonist’s daughter. Matt will also be featured on “A Tribute to Reverend Tongue”
composed by WSU Jazz Bass Professor Frederick “David” Snider. Student soloists will include trumpeter Brendan McMurphy, pianist Charles Wicklander and saxophonists Patrick Sheng, Oliver Walter and David Crow.
This concert is sponsored by the WSU School of Music and Jazz Society at WSU and is made possible in part by a generous grant from the WSU CougParents Program.
