Baylor's Concert Jazz Ensemble Performs

Baylor University’s Concert Jazz Ensemble will present its third concert of the 2021-2022 season with a program on Thursday, February 24, beginning at 7:30 p.m. in Jones Concert Hall, which is located within the Glennis McCrary Music Building. This fine, twenty-one-member ensemble is led by Alex Parker, Senior Lecturer in Jazz Studies and Director of the Wayne Fisher Jazz Program at Baylor University.
Opening their program will be “Blue Five Jive” by Benny Carter, who was an influential alto saxophonist and also a masterly composer, arranger, bandleader, trumpeter, and clarinetist.
That will be followed by Dave Brubeck’s tribute to one of the great saxophonists of our time, his “Michael Brecker Waltz.” Dave Wolpe has taken Brubeck’s original combo version and transformed it into an exciting big-band piece.
The Concert Jazz Ensemble will then play “Perdido” by Juan Tizol, who was a trombonist in Duke Ellington’s band. In fact, it was Ellington who arranged the piece and popularized it with a memorable recording about six weeks after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
Also to be heard on this Baylor concert are “Mambone” by Bob Mintzer, “Signal Fires” by Fred Sturm, and Oliver Nelson’s “Miss Fine.”
The Concert Jazz Ensemble’s program will close with the Michael Philip Mossman arrangement of “Afro Blue” by the Cuban-born percussionist and composer, Mongo Santamaria.
This concert is free of charge and open to the public. It is also available for livestreaming at baylor.edu/music/live.