• This event has passed.

VJC Big Band 2022 Scholarship Gala

December 2, 2022 @ 8:00 pm

TICKETS

The Music of Duke Ellington

In-person and livestreamed event
(Masks are required for in-person attendance)

This event is the primary fundraiser for the VJC Scholarship Fund which grants an annual average of $27,000 in scholarships to students, offsetting fees for VJC ensembles, private lessons and its world-renowned summer jazz workshop.

The VJC Big Band performs the compositions and arrangements of Duke Ellington, hailed as “America’s greatest composer” by Jazz at Lincoln Center. This swing dance will feature the brilliant clarinet and vocal work of Evan Arntzen plus the finesse of the VJC Big Band, now in its 19th year.

Duke Ellington is best known for his danceable hits like Satin Doll and It Don’t Mean a Thing (if it Ain’t Got that Swing), but he was much more than a composer of popular music. His prolific creativity, his visionary use of media, and his use of art in the fight against racism have uplifted his stature to that of an American legend. Ellington composed over 3,000 songs and performed in over 20,000 concerts throughout the United States, Europe, Latin America, Asia and Africa. His big band was one of the longest-lived of any in all of jazz history. Ellington composed familiar hits like Mood Indigo, but he also created large-scale pieces, including orchestral and sacred works.

Ellington is widely considered to be one of the United States’ most important composers of any musical form. He earned a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1966, the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1969, and the Legion of Honor by France in 1973; he was posthumously awarded a special award citation from the Pulitzer Prize Board. At his funeral, attended by over 12,000 people at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, Ella Fitzgerald summed up the occasion, “It’s a very sad day…A genius has passed.”

The VJC pays a swinging tribute to Ellington with a special concert featuring Evan Arntzen, clarinetist and vocalist known for his work with Vince Giordano and the Nighthawks and Catherine Russell. Polish those dancing shoes – it’s been a while!

“Evan has a distinctive style on both his chosen instruments, on which he offers appealing sounds, fluent command and that often elusive thing called swing. His singing is gratifyingly unaffected and unpretentious, adding a personal and natural ‘extra’.”

—Dan Morgenstern, NEA Jazz Master

Rob Freeberg - music director
Sherm Fox - band manager
Evan Arntzen - featured soloist on woodwinds and vocals





 

Related Events