WSU Music Closes Jazz Week at Wayne with All-Star Youth Ensemble Performance at Detroit Jazz Festival
DETROIT, MI (August 27, 2007) – The Wayne State University Jazz Big Band will perform under the direction of Christopher Collins at the 2007 Detroit International Jazz Festival. With GRAMMY nominated vocalist Kurt Elling, the Big Band will perform on Sunday, September 2 at 6:15 p.m. at Hart Plaza on the Carhartt Amphitheatre Stage. For a complete Jazz Festival schedule visit www.detroitjazzfest.com.
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Detroit Jazz Festival All-Star Ensemble 2007
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For the second year, the Wayne State Big Band has been invited to perform on a festival main stage with a headlining artist. The WSU Big Band is the only university band in the history of the festival to be invited to perform with a major festival artist. At the 2006 Detroit International Jazz Festival, Chris Collins and the Big Band performed with GRAMMY Award winning vocalist Diane Schuur. WSU Big Band members are Andrew Nichols (alto sax); James Hughes and Levi Jensen (tenor saxes); Josh Marion (Baritone sax); Tom Parks, Stefan Seslija, Tony Messina and Devon Staples (trumpets); Ron Kischuck, Luke Schram, Kyle Hanley, Chelsea Hallendy and Jeff Neuenschwander (trombones); Nate Winn (drums); Ryan Enderle (bass); Mike Karloff (piano); and Chuck Newsome (guitar).
Chicago-born Kurt Elling is the preeminent young male jazz singer today. Nightmoves, his first recording for Concord/Universal, follows a ten-year career that earned Elling seven GRAMMY nominations for six Blue Note albums. “Elling may be the greatest male Jazz singer of all time” reports Jazz Review (UK). He has toured the world with his quartet, performing to critical acclaim in Europe, the Middle East, South America, Asia, and Australia, as well as at jazz festivals and concert halls across North America. He has spent six consecutive years at the top of the Down Beat Critics and Jazz Times Reader’s polls and has received three Jazz Journalists’ Association Awards for Best Male Vocalist and the Prix Billie Holiday from the Academie du Jazz in Paris.
Led by WSU Associate Professor Christopher Collins, Wayne State’s elite Jazz Big Band has performed sold-concerts with the legendary Joe Lovano and his quartet at the Detroit Symphony Orchestra’s Max M. Fisher Music Center. The band will perform on Orchestra Hall’s stage this November with WSU Artist-in-Residence and woodwind artist Eddie Daniels. As one of the oldest jazz studies programs in the country, WSU has played host to a vast array of visiting jazz clinicians, including Branford Marsalis, Billy Taylor, Chick Corea, Joe Lovano, Jon Faddis, Elvin Jones, Steve Houghton, Dave Liebman, Kenny Werner, Fareed Haque, Marvin Stamm, and Woody Shaw.
As the closing event to the first annual Jazz Week at Wayne, the Detroit Jazz Festival All-Star Youth Ensemble will perform under the direction of Christopher Collins on the Carhartt Amphitheatre Stage at 1 p.m. on Saturday, September 1. Band members were chosen from participating Jazz Week students who attended the one-week workshop held on Wayne’s campus July 23 – 26. Members, chosen from Jazz Week’s outstanding students, were announced on July 27 at Campus Martius Park in Downtown Detroit during the students “4th Fridays with Ford” performance at the Park (2007 All-Star Youth Ensemble personnel attached below).