UMaine Chamber Jazz Ensemble Concert Nov. 7
Contact: Karel Lidral, 581-1256; George Manlove, 581-4756
ORONO — The new University of Maine Chamber Jazz Ensemble will debut its first formal concert with a program of great jazz standards on Nov. 7 in Minsky Recital Hall, Class of 1944 Hall on the Orono campus.
The program, beginning at 7:30 p.m., will include original tunes from Horace Silver (“Sister Sadie”), Herbie Hancock (“Maiden Voyage”), Sonny Rollins (“Sonnymoon for Two”), and Charlie Parker (“Now’s the Time”), as well as works by Eddie Harris, McCoy Tyner, Jimmy Heath, Stanley Turrentine, Fats Waller, Red Garland, Kenny Barron, and Antonio Carlos Jobim.
Tickets are $6; students with a MaineCard are admitted free. For more information, please call the Maine Center for the Arts Box Office at 581-1755 or visit the School of Performing Arts website (www.umaine.edu/spa).
Considered the keystone of UMaine’s minor in jazz studies, which began officially this fall, the new Chamber Jazz Ensemble is a group of several soloists or small ensembles with piano accompaniment. The UMaine School of Performing Arts’ new jazz studies minor is designed for undergraduate and graduate students, music majors and non-music majors. The curriculum consists of classes in jazz improvisation, chamber jazz arranging and piano, jazz history, and also participation in the Chamber Jazz Ensemble, and, optionally, in the Jazz Ensemble.
This semester’s group includes students from three states and a Canadian province. Musicians include Ashley Drew, flute, Rebecca Bosworth-Clemens, clarinet, Gary Craig, alto saxophone, Zachary Duren, trombone, Charity Harmon, flute, Scott Horey, vibraphone, Anna-Marlies Hunter, clarinet, Steve Kane, alto saxophone, Zachary Keenan, trumpet, Chris Malm, trumpet, Michael Nokes, trumpet, and Danielle Sullivan, alto saxophone.
Piloted in the fall of 2005, the Chamber Jazz Ensemble was developed by music Professor Karel Lidral, director and pianist for the group. The ensemble is an extension of a project Lidral and his wife Terry have pursued since 1988 through their involvement in the The Lidral Duo, which features Karel Lidral on soprano saxophone and Terry Lidral on piano, with their son Arthur occasionally sitting in on drums to form a trio. It also has included other instrumentalists, increasing its size at times to a quartet or quintet, and performs frequent afternoon sessions in the Memorial Union.
Since great jazz musicians have emerged on instruments not always associated with the jazz big band, Lidral wanted the Chamber Jazz Ensemble to offer a new forum at UMaine in which all pitched instrument players are welcome.
“This is invaluable for those music majors who would otherwise likely have no direct experience with jazz, as well as for the non-music major who may not be able to participate in the UMaine jazz ensemble,” Lidral says. “For those able to participate in both, it allows for much greater exposure to the art of jazz in general and improvisation in particular.”
Audiences may notice that the piano in the ensemble replaces the standard jazz rhythm section — usually piano, bass, and drums — in the same spirit that orchestral reductions for the piano are used by recitalists in the “classical” realm, Lidral explains.
Everyone in the group learns the lead line and chord progressions of the standard jazz repertory, and students purchase their own music as a real “lifetime investment” in their musical futures for lifelong learning, he says.
An accomplished performer, teacher, conductor, adjudicator and clinician, Lidral has shared the concert stage professionally with many jazz greats and played as a member of the Jack McDuff Quintet in New York for two years. He also has played with the bands of Vicki Carr, Kate Smith, The Temptations, The Fifth Dimension, Manhattan Transfer, Wayne Newton and Englebert Humperdinck, and with comedians Sammy Kaye, Red Skelton, Milton Berle, and Henny Youngman and others. Lidral joined the UMaine music faculty in 1993.
The Chamber Jazz Ensemble also will perform from 1-2 p.m., Dec. 6 in the Bear’s Den at the Memorial Union.