The music of Motown, Miles Davis, Nat King Cole, Dizzy Gillespie, Duke Ellington and other jazz greats will be featured in the seventh annual “Evening of Jazz” concert at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 21, in the Fine Arts Hall at the Northwest Campus of Santa Fe College, 3000 NW 83 Street, Gainesville. The Rhythm and Blues Band, the Jazz Combo, and the Santa Fe Big Band will perform along with singers from the college’s vocal studios.
Tickets are $15 orchestra, $12 balcony, $9 senior and children 12 and under, and free to Santa Fe College students and employees. For ticket information, call the Box Office 352-395-4181, Bob Fetterman at 352-395-4133, or visit the Fine Arts ticket website:
http://www.sfcollege.edu/finearts/
The Rhythm and Blues Band will open the concert with four Motown hits, all sung by Christine Wight: “In the Midnight Hour” as performed by Wilson Pickett; “Shake a Tail Feather” as performed by Ray Charles; “At Last” as performed by Etta James; and Robert Johnson’s “Sweet Home Chicago.” The band features two piano players, two guitars, three horns, bass guitar and drums.
The Jazz Combo will perform “So What” and “All Blues” from Miles Davis’s 1959 quadruple-platinum album “Kind of Blue,” often described as the best jazz album of all time and acknowledged by music writers as one of the most influential albums ever recorded. The group will also play “There Will Never Be Another You” as performed by Nat King Cole and Dizzy Gillespie’s arrangement of “A Night in Tunisia.” The Jazz Combo features vocalist Jarrod Clarizio, three horns, guitar, upright bass, piano and drum set.
Newly invited to perform at the International Jazz Festival in Montreux, Switzerland, and fresh off their appearance in the college’s fall theatre production of “The All Night Strut!,” the Santa Fe Big Band will reprise several numbers from that musical review: Doc B’s adaptation of Gene Harris’s “Operator”; “Hit That Jive, Jack” as performed by Nat King Cole; and “It Don’t Mean a Thing (If It Ain’t Got That Swing)” by Irving Mills and Duke Ellington. Jarrod Clarizio will sing Cole Porter’s “Night and Day,” Darielis Galarza will sing “Stuff Like That There” by Jay Livingston and Ray Evans, and the band will perform “The Count Has Time” by Alan M. Wright, “The Opener” by Carl Strommen, “Aha!” by Bob Mintzer, and “Floating Home” and “Get in Line” by Gordon Goodwin.
The Santa Fe Big Band has performed at Carnegie Hall, Epcot, Florida’s Lakeside Jazz Festival and CityWalk Universal Studios. The band also tours high schools throughout North Central Florida.
