Jazz Band Classic at Symphony Space
March 14, 2007

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE through 3-14-07
Contact:   Vanessa Rose, (212) 581-5933     vrose@nyys.org

Warren Vaché and Jazz Band Classic Perform the Trumpet Blues.

A Salute to the Great Trumpet-Playing Bandleaders

Symphony Space on March 14 at 7:30pm.

Jazz Band Classic and the legendary artist Warren Vaché perform “Trumpet Blues: A Salute to the Great Trumpet-Playing Bandleaders” under the leadership of director Chris Winans. Now in its fifth season, the 16-member ensemble, specializing in swing band music of the post-war era, will honor legends Louis Armstrong, Bunny Berigan, and Harry James in the Leonard Nimoy Thalia Hall at Symphony Space on Wednesday, March 14, 2007, at 7:30pm.

Chris Winans, Jazz Band Classic’s new director, is an active performer and educator. He is currently the jazz trumpet instructor at Westfield State College in Westfield, MA, and he has taught at the University of Northern Colorado, where he directed the UNC Jazz Lab Band II and the UNC Salsa Band. Mr. Winans was a finalist in the National Trumpet Competition in Fairfax, VA, for two years in a row, and he received his B.M.E. and M.M. in performance from the University of Northern Colorado.

Warren Vaché, the cornetist of the Rosemary Clooney ensemble, has performed and recorded with such luminaries as Benny Goodman, Benny Carter, Hank Jones, Gerry Mulligan, Woody Herman, Ruby Braff and Bobby Short. He has performed at every major jazz venue and festival around the world, and is a charter member of the faculty of the Juilliard Jazz Program.

Jazz Band Classic, modeled on the big bands of the 1930’s and 40’s, re-invigorates the vanishing big band arrangements of the great exponents of jazz. Jazz Band Classic showcases New York City’s best young jazz talent in performances of traditional big band music along with the stylizations of the current jazz idiom.

The final concert of the season will showcase trombone innovator Steve Turre in “Backbone,” featuring the music of Glenn Miller, Tommy Dorsey, J.J. Johnson and Bob Brookmeyer, as well as the première of Permission by Charles Schiermeyer, in the Allen Room of Jazz at Lincoln Center on Thursday, May 17, 2007 at 7:30pm.

Single tickets for the March 14 performance are available for $20 by calling (212) 581-5933 or online at www.nyyouthsymphony.org. Group rates are also available.

Jazz Band Classic is a program of the award-winning New York Youth Symphony, an independent program providing the metropolitan area’s best young musicians with programs in orchestra, chorus, chamber music, composition, and conducting in addition to jazz. Among its alumni are Marin Alsop, Cho-Liang Lin, Shlomo Mintz, Gerard Schwarz, Ransom Wilson, and members of the Juilliard, Emerson, and Mendelssohn String Quartets, the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, the New York Philharmonic, and the London Symphony Orchestra. Past conductors include Leonard Slatkin, Myung-Whun Chung, David Alan Miller, Samuel Wong, Miguel Harth-Bedoya, and Mischa Santora.