Jazz Orchestra to showcase talent
Photo courtesy of Jeff Macomber
Missouri Southern’s Jazz Orchestra pictured in front of Webster Hall. The next concert will be May 2 in Corley Auditorium and will feature Rebecca Luebber as a guest vocalist.
The MSSU Southern Jazz Orchestra will perform their Mid-Winter Showcase on Thursday, Feb. 28 at 7:30 p.m. The concert will be held in Corley Auditorium in Webster Hall.
The group, directed by Dr. Jeffrey Macomber, will perform six pieces.
The Southern Jazz Orchestra is made up completely of students from the University and features soloists with mostly improvisational acts, said Macomber, head of the music department. Band members are selected through an audition process at the beginning of the semester involving both sight-reading and auditory improvisation, he said.
The opening performance will be of Miles Davis’s upbeat tune, “Four.”
It will be followed by a ballad, “Spring Will Be a Little Late This Year” by Frank Loesser.
Macomber arranged this piece to feature the flugelhorne, which will be played by Kyle Dickey.
The next piece will be “Chega de saudade” or “No More Blues” by Tom Jobim.
“Jobim is a great Brazilian composer of bossa nova music… it’s more of an up-tempo samba,” said Macomber.
Following will be “All the Things You Are” by Jerome Kern. The arrangement, by Mike Tomaro, is in a Latin style which is unique for this song, said Macomber.
The next piece will be another ballad titled, “Here’s That Rainy Day.” The song was composed by Jimmy Van Heusen.
The last performance of the night will be Macomber’s arrangement of “Can’t Hide Love.”
It was written by Skip Scarborouh and was later performed by Earth, Wind, and Fire.
“It’s basically a funk style tune, kind of slow, kind of a heavy beat,” said Macomber. “That will feature a number of people in it.
Among them, Barry Arwood, our baritone sax player, and Brock Herron, our first trombone, and our drummer Matt Holland.“It’s great stuff,” he said. “It’s part of our American tradition and our American heritage. This music of what we call the ‘great American song book’ and is what these students are a part of.”
The Southern Jazz Orchestra’s next concert will be on May 2 at 7:30 p.m. in Corley Auditorium.
The concert will feature guest vocalist Rebecca Luebber.
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