PULLMAN, Wash. — The award-winning Washington State University Vocal Jazz Ensemble and Jazz Big Band have scheduled a concert Feb. 9 in the Bryan Hall Theatre on the WSU campus. The 8 p.m. program is open to the public without charge.
To celebrate Black History Month, the program will include music by African-American composers Dizzy Gillespie, Frank Foster, Clifford Brown and Thelonious Monk.
The WSU Vocal Jazz Ensemble, directed by music faculty member Horace-Alexander Young, will open the concert. Young is a graduate of WSU. He has been recognized as a musical director and soloist with artists such as Bill Withers, Regina Belle, the McCoy Tyner Big Band and Abdullah Ibrahim (a.k.a. Dollar Band).
VOJAZZ will present Gillespie’s “Oo Bop Sha Bam,” an original arrangement of “Sometimes I’m Happy” by the group’s pianist, Sonja Ramirez, and a treatment of Phil Perry’s “Music Prayer for Peace” as arranged by Young. Soloists will include Eliot Thompson and Julie Silvera-Jensen.
The Jazz Big Band, directed by Gregory Yasinitsky, coordinator of jazz studies, will present Brown’s “Joy Spring” as arranged by Charles Argersinger, coordinator of composition. The Jazz Big Band will also present Foster’s “Who Me” and Monk’s “I Mean You” as arranged by Yasinitsky. Soloists include bassist Tracie King, trombonist Bryan Long, trumpeters Darin Graber and Tom Barber, and saxophonists Eric Skidmore, Jeremy Hamilton and Steve Erwin.
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