Summer is almost at an end but in the metro area there is always one final huge party to attend – the Detroit Jazz Festival – always Labor Day weekend, on the riverfront near Hart Plaza. And this year there is an extra-special reason to make it a not-to-be-missed occasion. The OU Jazz Band has been invited to play, along with MTD alum
Regina Carter.
Regina will play on Sunday with her Reverse Thread band. And she will play again with OU Jazz on Monday, September 5 at noon, at the Mack Avenue Waterfront Stage. Among those playing will be
Josh Grekin, trumpet;
Dakotah Cooper, alto;
Matt Dufresne, tenor;
Nick Fabian, trombone;
Neal Wright, guitar;
Quincy Stewart, piano;
Mark Johnson, bass;
Ryan Thibodeau, drums; and
Jesse Durell Gibbs, drums/percussion. Doctoral student Joshua Grekin has played at the DJF before, but nevertheless he says, “I'm very excited to play with Regina, I'm a big fan.”
Music Education student Quincy Stewart is a seasoned jazz performer who has also played the DJF before. Asked about collaborating with Regina Carter he says, “We are all people with souls and different things to say. I'm not star-struck nor would I think she would want any of us to be.” He thinks Regina believes “musicians . . . all have something to contribute to this art form.” Quincy’s experience has taught him that, “Growing as a musician is in lockstep with growing in life; the key is to develop YOUR sound, your unique voice.”
To showcase the “voice” of OU Jazz
Miles Brown, jazz program coordinator and musical director for the performance, says the ensemble expects to play tunes from a repertoire list that includes
Blue Bird,
Make it Good,
Repetition,
Mandingo Street,
Don't Get Sassy,
Love Theme from Spartacus, and
Azure.
Detroit’s is one of the few remaining free jazz festivals in the country. In a poll in
Jazz Times earlier this year, DJF was voted among the top four jazz festivals in North America and it was the only completely free festival so honored. Last year the festival drew an audience of 750,000 with 23% of attendees coming from out of state. It will be quite an experience, especially for our young musicians and Miles says he is “excited to bring the band down there and showcase our talents.”
Read all about the festival here.
If you are traveling (or living) out of state this fall you can still support our OU artists. In New York you can experience the artistry of two members of the OU family at the same performance.
Kitty Dubin, who teaches play writing for MTD, tells us, “My play,
Caller, Are You There? . . . was selected for inclusion in the Estrogenius Festival in New York City. I contacted [
MTD Theatre Professor]
Karen Sheridan to put the word out to our alum in New York [
about] auditions. Lo and behold,
Matt Hammond, who was in my very first playwriting class in 1997, got cast in the play. I wasn't able to be there but the director said Matt gave a ‘fabulous’ audition. What a great full circle moment!” Kitty’s play will run in November. Here is a synopsis: Brash radio talk-show psychologist Dr. Linda Messenger's motto is "kids always come first" but that message becomes suspect after a mysterious young woman calls in to her show. You can find more information about the
Estrogenious Festival, including performance dates, here.
Kitty Dubin also passed along news of a Michigan performance for the work of
Anetria Cole, a former Advanced Playwriting student whose play
Bronzeville Gold recently premiered in New Jersey (as we reported in the May issue of Prism). There will be a staged reading at the Fireside Festival at Performance Network in Ann Arbor on Wednesday, August 31 at 7 pm.
Dance alum
Craig Miller will be performing in Chicago this fall. Craig dances with Inaside Chicago Dance and their next major concert will be
Constant Motion at the Harris Theater in Millennium Park on September 24, 2011. The Harris Theater is one of the premier performance spaces in the Chicago. The Inaside Chicago Dance is a not-for-profit jazz dance company that prides itself on “leading the way for contemporary jazz dance in the present and future.” Their upcoming concert will combine a “tribalistic work” and a “jazzy swing piece.”
Read more about the company here.
Associate Professor
Michael Mitchell, music program director, also sent us a noteworthy alum story, one in which he himself has played a significant role, since he and composer/educator
Jeffrey Cobb have crossed paths several times. Mike wrote, “Jeff Cobb is originally from Grand Rapids. Shortly after college he moved to Texas where he and I taught in the same school district in San Antonio, Texas. I was the head choral director at Judson High School and he was the choral director at one of the junior high schools that fed into my school. When I left Texas in 1994, Jeff and I lost touch. When I got to OU in 1997 I learned there was a person in one of Jackie's [
Professor Jackie Wiggins] graduate classes who knew me from Texas. It turned out to be Jeff, who had just relocated back to Michigan to be the choral director at Traverse City Central High School. While he taught there, he also earned his Master of Music in Choral Conducting at OU as my student. And he built one of the very best high school choral programs in the nation at Traverse City Central. He left that job a few years ago to be a stay-at-home dad and to pursue his career as a composer. He is a highly successful, published composer and his works have been performed all over the country and have won several composition contests. We have performed his music here at Oakland. His choirs have also performed music that I composed.” And now Jeff has been appointed Chair of the Music Department and choral director at Northwestern Michigan College in Traverse City. Congratulations!
See Jeffrey's website here.
We also have new faculty to congratulate. We welcome Miles Brown, jazz program coordinator, as assistant professor. Also recently appointed is
Anthony Guest, assistant professor of theatre, teaching acting and directing. Professor Guest was previously on the faculty of Radford University in Virginia, but he is a Michigan native and is happy to be returning to his home state. Tony says of his move to OU, “I am looking forward to collaborating in the spirit of the art form with highly creative colleagues and with the bright and talented students."
The theatre program also welcomes a new visiting assistant professor for scenic design.
Jeremy Barnett was educated at Carnegie Mellon University and Boston University and will move to Michigan from Massachusetts. You can view Jeremy’s design work on his
website (currently under construction!) here.
Finally, we are sad to announce the recent death of Scott Petersen who graduated from OU in 1987 with a BA in Music. He fought a lifelong battle against Cystic Fibrosis which included a double-lung transplant, but nevertheless enjoyed a successful career as a saxophone player and was a much loved member of the jazz community, both in Detroit and in the San Francisco Bay area. Read more about Scott in the
Metro Times, here.
Photo: The OU Jazz Band in rehearsal. 