Duke Ellington Celebration
August 3, 2019 @ 6:30 PM to 8:00 PM at West Claremont Center for Music and the Arts
The Aardvark Jazztet will celebrate Ellington’s 120th Birthday with music spanning four decades. Selections from the Swing Era will include favorites such as Solitude, In a Mellotone, and Billy Strayhorn’s theme song for the Ellington Orchestra, Take the A Train. Ellington’s film music will be represented by Pie Eye’s Blues from the score for Otto Preminger’s Anatomy of a Murder, and the Duke’s theatrical dimension will be heard in the lovely ballad I Got It Bad (and That Ain’t Good) from the musical Jump for Joy. The group will celebrate Duke’s late-period sacred music with the toe-tapping bossa nova Heaven from The Second Sacred Concert. WCCMA is committed to making music accesible for all. Suggested freewill offering for this concert is suggested at $25 Adults, $20 Members, $5 Students, $40 for families.
For More information visit: https://www.wcc-ma.org/event/aardvark-jazztet-duke-ellington-celebration
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Founded in 1973, The Aardvark Jazz Orchestra has been a force in the international jazz scene for more than 40 years. Aardvark is one of the longest-running large jazz ensembles in the world. The band is well known for its wide-ranging shows, from new music by founder/director Mark Harvey to classics and rarities by Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Mary Lou Williams, Miles Davis, John Coltrane and other jazz legends. Aardvark has given premieres of more than 175 works for jazz orchestra, performs widely, and appears on 14 CDs, including 8 discs from Leo Records, one of the world’s leading adventuresome music labels. Guest artists who have appeared with Aardvark include jazz luminaries Jaki Byard, Sheila Jordan, Jimmy Giuffre, Geri Allen, Raj Mehta, Dominique Eade, Lewis Porter, and Matt Savage, to name a few.
Composer/trumpeter Mark Harvey is the founder and music director of the Aardvark Jazz Orchestra and teaches jazz studies and composition at MIT. Harvey has performed in major venues including Fenway Park and Symphony Hall, Boston, the Knitting Factory and the Village Gate (NYC), the National Gallery of Art (DC), the Left Bank Jazz Society (MD), the Southern California Institute of Architecture (CA), the Berlin Jazz Festival (Germany), and the Baja State Theater (Mexico). His musical credits also include recordings with George Russell’s Living Time Orchestra (Blue Note), and Baird Hersey & the Year of the Ear (Arista/Novus) and appearances with Gil Evans, Howard McGhee, Sam Rivers, Claudio Roditi, and other notables. Harvey has received commissions from the Meet the Composer/Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Commissioning Program, the 15th Annual John Coltrane Memorial Concert, FiLmprov, the the MIT Sesquicentennial Celebration, Organization of American Kodaly Educators,and the MIT Festival Jazz and Wind Ensembles, among others. In 2015, Dr. Harvey was named Boston Jazz Hero by the Jazz Journalists Association, one of 24 jazz advocates/activists recognized nationally.
Delphi Trio – final performance of the 2019 Summer Concert Season
August 24, 2019 @ 6:30 PM to 8:00 PM at West Claremont Center for Music and the Arts
*Please note corrected date*
Immensely rich classic repertoire and contemporary music by critically acclaimed California piano trio. Admission is by donation, suggested at $25 Adults, $20 Members, $5 Students, $40 for families. For more information visit wcc-ma.org. This concert is part of the 2-day Music Experience in collaboration with Saint-Gaudens Memorial (sgnhs.org), an immersive opportunity to explore great artists across 2 days and 2 locations.
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Praised for “…spot-on ensemble playing and a beautifully blended sound…” (San Francisco Classical Voice) and “…rich, committed string tone, dazzling pianism, rhythmic flexibility, and risky tempi…” (Sarasota Herald Tribune) the Delphi Trio has become a powerfully eloquent voice in the world of chamber music. Prizewinners of the 2015 Orlando Concours in the Netherlands, the Delphi Trio has performed in Germany, the Netherlands, Canada, and across the United States. Recent highlights include the world premiere of William Bolcom’s Piano Trio; a concerto residency with the San Jose Chamber Orchestra and Barbara Day Turner; the west coast premiere of Paul Juon’s Episodes Concertantes (1912) with Michael Morgan and the Oakland Symphony; and performances throughout the United States, including the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival, and WFMT Studios Chicago. The Delphi Trio is grounded in the immensely rich classic repertoire for piano trio and is committed to the exploration of its deep, lasting meaning for performers and audience alike. The Trio sees contemporary music as a natural extension of the standard repertoire and is therefore dedicated to the music of our time. Delphi has given acclaimed world premieres of William Bolcom’s Piano Trio (2014), Max Stoffregen’s Coyote Plan (2013) and Sahba Aminikia’s Deltangi-ha (2012) and Shab o Meh (2014). The Trio will be premiering a new work by Evan Price, composer and jazz violinist formerly of the Turtle Island Quartet, in the 2017-18 season. The Delphi Trio believes chamber music is an ideal model for education. Delphi is committed to supporting young artists as they begin their careers and has established their Emerging Artist Program to collaborate with collegiate students in their first professional chamber music concert. The Trio also curates the Practice Project, a social media group dedicated to fostering community, openness, and vulnerability among both professional and amateur artists. The ensemble is built on trust and communication; to that end, each Delphi rehearsal starts in the same way – a meal, conversation, and music.
