Glenridge Performing Arts Center Spotlights Jazz Performances
Headliners: The Four Freshmen, Nate Najar with Harry Allen in December 2014
[Sarasota, FL: December 1, 2014] The jazz line-up for the Glenridge Performing Arts Center spotlights The Four Freshmen on Sunday, December 14 at 2PM and Nate Najar’s Jazz Holiday with special guest Harry Allen on Saturday December 20 at 8PM.
The December jazz performances kick off on Saturday, December 13 at 8PM with a performance by the award-winning Pine View Jazz Band. These talented and sophisticated young musicians—both instrumentalists and vocalists– surprise their audiences with spot-one covers of the music we all love from Big Band and Sinatra to early jazz and the more contemporary Michael Bublé. Tickets are $15 per person.
The Four Freshmen and the legendary sound that began in 1948 continues to bring their unique brand of vocal harmony to audiences worldwide. What dominated the airwaves and sparked romance throughout the 1950’s, inspired others such as the Beach Boys and Manhattan Transfer, and is still alive today in performances delivered by Brian Eichenberger, Stein Malvey, Curtis Calderon, and Bob Ferreira, the 21st century rendition of The Four Freshmen. This American male vocal band quartet blends open-harmony jazz arrangements with the big band vocal group sounds in Top 40 hits such as Lullaby of Birdland, It’s a Blue World, Poinciana, Angel Eyes and more. Their performance in the jewel-box venue at GPAC promises an up-close experience from any seat in the house. Tickets for this single performance on Sunday, December 14 at 2PM are $35.
“Nate Najar’s Jazz Holiday” with special guest Harry Allen on tenor saxophone will return to the GPAC scene on Saturday, December 20 at 8 pm. The jazz combo also features John Lamb on bass, Mark Feinman on drums and introduces James Suggs on the trumpet. They’ll be swinging some Holiday favorites along with bossa nova and as usual a healthy dose of Ellington, including some of my adaptations from the Ellington/Strayhorn Nutcracker in the concert co-produced by the GPAC and South County Jazz Club. Tickets are $20.
Tickets for the entire season are on sale now and can be purchased online at www.GPACTix.com, or by calling the GPAC Box Office at 941-552-5325. All performances take place at the Glenridge Performing Arts Center (7333 Scotland Way, Sarasota, FL.)
Glenridge Performing Arts Center Jazz Performances in 2015
LARRY CORYELL TRIO
Saturday, January 17 at 8:00PM
Tickets: $20
Larry Coryell has been described by Whitney Balliett as “the most innovative and original guitarist since Charlie Christian.” His playing is fresh and exciting giving standards and jazz standards a unique treatment that only a true master can give. He will be joined by Mark Neuenschwander on bass and Tracy Alexander on drums in this performance.
As one of the pioneers of 60’s – 70’s jazz– perhaps the pioneer in the ears of some — Larry Coryell deserves a special place in the history books. He brought a unique sensibility to jazz electric guitar playing in the 1960s, a hard-edged, cutting tone, phrasing, and note-bending that owed as much to blues, rock and even country as it did to earlier, smoother bop influences. A true eclectic, armed with a brilliant technique, he is comfortable in almost every style, from the most decibel-heavy, distortion-laden electric work to the most delicate, soothing, intricate lines on acoustic guitar.
Co-Produced by South County Jazz Club and GPAC.
RADCLIFF PITCHES
Wednesday, January 14 at 8:00pm
Tickets: $15
The Radcliffe Pitches are Harvard’s oldest female a cappella singing group, founded in 1975 at the historic Hasty Pudding Club. Founders Dianne Nabatoff ’78 and Kathy Manning ’78 were undergraduates at Radcliffe College when they created the Pitches as a group for female voices to sing in a close harmony setting.
Today, the group is composed of 13 Harvard undergraduate women who love to sing. The Pitches perform a large and varied repertoire of jazz standards, swing and boogie-woogie, and contemporary pieces, drawing upon the musical stylings of inspirational figures such as Ella Fitzgerald, the Andrews Sisters, Peggy Lee, and Nancy Wilson. Every year, the Pitches perform many concerts at Harvard and around the world, with recent tour destinations including New York, Washington DC, San Francisco, China, Hong Kong, Thailand, Japan, Bermuda, and more! The Pitches are excited to be celebrating their 40th anniversary with their first-ever tour to Florida in January 2015!
MICHAEL LASSER & FRIENDS
That Stardust Melody: The Songs of Hoagy Carmichael
Saturday, January 24 at 8:00PM
Tickets: $22.50
BACK BY POPULAR DEMAND! Peabody award-winning author and pundit Michael Lasser returns to GPAC with his amazing friends, songstress Cindy Miller and pianist Alan Jones to celebrate the musical genius of the great Hoagy Carmichael.
An attorney-at-law and a composer, Hoagy Carmichael was an intriguing mix of contradictions who, when all was said and done, wrote as many classic American songs as any of his great contemporaries. If he fell just short of Jerome Kern and George Gershwin, he was certainly the equal of Frank Loesser and Harry Warren.
In a thirty-year career, Hoagy emerged as an unlikely mix of the down home and the sophisticated – the young fellow from Bloomington, complete with Hoosier twang, and the New York jazzman at home in the big city. Although he was a composer, he wrote a lot of lyrics for which he never took credit. He also acted and sang in movies, even though he said he sang “flatsy through the nose.” Flatsy or not, such songs as “Star Dust,” “Georgia on My Mind,” and “Rockin’ Chair” are among the great standards that continue to survive, generation after generation.
GLENN MILLER ORCHESTRA
Sunday, January 25 at 2:00PM
Tickets: $35
The great band leader and trombonist Glenn Miller said, “A band ought to have a sound all of its own. It ought to have a personality.” Decades after his disappearance over the English Channel, his band, with its unique jazz sound, is still performs and is considered one of the greatest bands of all time. Re-formed in 1956, the Glenn Miller Orchestra plays an average of 300 live dates a year all around the world.
For one foot-stomping, swing in your seat afternoon, they’ll be all yours in the best jazz club in Sarasota – our own intimate GPAC theatre.
“FELLA SINGS ELLA” with SCOTT COULTER
Wednesday, February 18 at 8:00PM
Tickets: $27.50/$22.50 GPAC Family
Lauded for his soaring high notes, purity of tone and way with a lyric, Scott Coulter has been called “the male Ella Fitzgerald.” This multi-award-winning vocalist dedicates an entire evening to the First Lady of Song and lovingly puts his own stamp on Fitzgerald classics from the Great American Songbook. Shedding light on the life story of the greatest female jazz singer of all time, this alluring program features “Don’t Get Around Much Anymore,” “Mack The Knife,” “Embraceable You” and many more favorites. It’s an unforgettable musical tribute you won’t want to miss.
Scott Coulter’s exceptional cabaret performances earned him both the 2001 Manhattan Association of Cabarets & Clubs (MAC) Award, as well as the 2001 Bistro Award for Outstanding Male Vocalist.
GIACOMO GATES, Jazz Singer
Saturday, February 28 at 8:00PM
Tickets: $30/$25 Jazz Club and GPAC Family
Blessed with a full-bodied and mellifluous voice, extraordinary rhythmic precision and an unerring sense of lyricism, Giacomo Gates’ total command of the vernacular, boundless creativity and exuberant passion of jazz sets him apart from nearly every other vocalist on the scene.
Gates is truly an entertainer, delivering music for all ages and styles along with witty patter and stories about the music so that every performance becomes a fun lesson in jazz history. With repeat engagements at major clubs in New York, Boston, Philadelphia, D.C., LA, New Orleans, and San Francisco, Gate’s enormous appeal and popularity are obvious.
He sometimes vocalizes as an instrument – trombone, trumpet, bass, and improvising bass lines or drum sounds in support of the piano solos. Giacomo states “Some of my favorite singers are Dexter Gordon, Ben Webster and Lester Young. They were singing through the horn. If that isn’t singing, I don’t know what is!”
CYNTHIA SAYER, Jazz Banjo
Saturday, March 14 at 8:00PM
Sunday, March 15 at 2:00PM
Tickets: $22.50
Contemporary, edgy, and soulful, Cynthia Sayer breaks all the banjo player stereotypes as she single-handedly brings the 4-string banjo to the forefront of jazz. Celebrated as the top 4-string banjoist in the world today and praised for her “drive and virtuosity” by the New York Times, Cynthia is a founding member of Woody Allen’s New Orleans Jazz Band with whom she played and toured for over 10 years.
Her solo career has taken her well beyond these New Orleans roots as a dynamic performer, instrumentalist and vocalist, and whose eclectic, swing-based shows embody the rarely heard range and versatility of the 4-string jazz banjo. Sayer has played with a variety of leading jazz, popular, & roots artists, including Bucky Pizzarelli, Dick Hyman, Wynton Marsalis, Les Paul, Bill Cosby, Marvin Hamlisch, Kenny Davern, Charlie Giordano (Springsteen’s E Street Band), Milt Hinton, Marian McPartland, John McEuen (Nitty Gritty Dirt Band), and many others.
Sayer has accumulated numerous awards and honors, including induction into the National Banjo Hall of Fame. The Dresden International Jazz Festival awarded Cynthia their Festival Trophy, describing her as “a pioneer of a new banjo style… an exceptional artist who, without showy gimmicks, captivates and excites her audiences.”
Accustomed to standing ovations at nearly every concert she performs, Sayer loves her GPAC fans who fill the hall to bursting every time she visits GPAC.
Bit’s Heroes: Bit Risner Trumpet & Vocals
Saturday, May 30 at 8:00pm
Tickets: $20
Jazz prodigy Bit Risner presents the music of her heroes: great trumpeters Clifford Brown, Miles Davis, and Dizzy Gillespie, and vocalists Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, and more.
Gayle Williams
Vision Marketing
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