Highlights In Jazz Announces 2017 Line Up, Honorary Doctorate for Jack Kleinsinger

Jack Kleinsinger's Highlights In Jazz, New York's longest running jazz concert series, announces the schedule for its 45th season featuring four monthly star studded Thursday night concerts taking place at the Tribeca Performing Arts Center of Borough Manhattan Community College, 199 Chambers Street, NYC. Each show begins at 8:00 PM

This year Kleinsinger's tireless work in producing the prestigious series for the past four and a half decades has at last received the recognition it has long deserved, with the bestowal to him of an honorary Doctorate of Letters degree from the University of North Florida. The institution to which Kleinsinger has donated the series' archive comprised of audio copies of every Highlights concert (allowed by contract for educational purposes), more than 2000 pages of concert reviews and photos too and over 300 video interviews, discussing his memories of each concert.

The digitized archive can be viewed at www.digitalcommons.unf.edu.

The honor came upon the recommendation of four time Grammy Award winning drummer Danny Gottlieb, longtime Professor of Jazz Studies at the University in the University's School of Music in its College of Arts and Science. Gottlieb recalls, "I had attended a few of the early Highlights concerts with my parents, and when I was 23, I was lucky enough to have been asked by Jack to participate in one of the concerts in 1976 -- Tubby the Tuba Meets A Jazz Band, a children's jazz concert which was based on a composition by Jack Kleinsinger's uncle George Kleinsinger, and featured Clark Terry. Jack Kleinsinger and his "Highlights in Jazz" concert series has had a profound impact not only on my life, but on so many other lives as well. There has never been a concert series like it."

This season's program kicks off on February 9, 2017 with the Highlights In Jazz 44th Anniversary Gala featuring the swinging jazz and blues of Vince Giordano and the Nighthawks with vocalist Ms Vinnie Knight. The New York Times has hailed Giordano and the Nighthawks for its sound that "takes standards back to their roots and infuses them with a quick-stepping effervescence, while Knight has been lauded for her "smooth, velvety, mysteriously angelic voice (that) has the sophistication of the great Sarah Vaughan, the earthiness of Pearl Bailey, and the seductiveness of Billie Holiday." Sharing the bill with Giordano and company will be Cynthia Sayer and her Joyride Band with clarinetist Adrian Cunnigham. An award winning banjo player and vocalist, who first rose to international prominence as a founding member of Woody Allen's New Orleans Jazz Band, Sayer has been praised by the Times for her "drive and virtuosity," and by pianist Dick Hyman for her music that "takes us into places where you'd never expect the banjo to be admitted."

The season's second concert on March 9, 2017 will be a Salute to David Amram, honoring the versatile multi-instrumentalist/composer who will be the recipient of this year's Annual Highlights In Jazz Award which as been presented since 1974 to honor a singular living jazz musician for, in Kleinsinger words, their "matchless musical achievements." He proclaims, "The first year I decided that everybody else waits for people to die and then they do memorial concerts. Why not honor these people while they're still alive and playing and let them know that we love them? The first year we honored Lionel Hampton and it was a thrilling night for me as a fledgling producer. Teddy Wilson showed up and Clark Terry was there. It was just such a wonderful evening and we've done it every year since." Previous honorees have includEd Roy Eldridge, Lionel Hampton, Roy Haynes, Hank Jones, Maxine Sullivan, Frank Wess, Joe Bushkin, Dr. Billy Taylor and many others. Joining Amram and his quartet will be two more Highlights In Jazz Award honorees, saxophonists Paquito D'Rivera and Jimmy Heath, plus trombonist Earl McIntyre and drummer Bobby Sanabria.

On Thursday April 6th, 2017 Highlights In Jazz will celebrate Women In Jazz with an inter-generational triple bill featuring the duo of perennial Highlights In Jazz favorites, pianist/vocalist Barbara Carroll with bassist/vocalist Jay Leonhart, who between the two have made over fifty Highlights In Jazz appearances through the years. They'll be joined by Grammy nominated vocalist René Marie and her quartet, in their debut Highlights In Jazz concert. Filling out the program will be International Women In Jazz Youth in Action Award Winner, up and coming pianist/organist Leonieke Scheuble and her group.

The season's concluding concert on May 4, 2017 will celebrate The Joe Bushkin Centenniel. Described as "a musician's musician" by Judy Garland, over the course of a seventy year career, Bushkin played with Tommy Dorsey, Benny Goodman, Louis Armstrong, Artie Shaw and Billie Holiday, led the band for Sinatra at the Paramount and was Bing Crosby's musical director. Kleinsinger who heard Bushkin many times in his day notes, "Joe is one of the great pianists of all times and people with good memories remember the days at The Embers where he was a star. He's written great songs like 'Oh Look At Me Now' and 'Hot Time In The Town Of Berlin', which was recorded by Crosby and Sinatra. We're going to do his songs; that's basically what this Centenniel concert is about." The all star band featuring the versatile front line of cornetist Warren Vache, trombonist Wycliffe Gordon, drummer Steve Johns, and saxophonist Harry Allen, plus bassist/vocalist Nicki Parrott, pianist/vocalist Eric Comstock and pianists John Colianni, Ted Rosenthal and Spike Wilner will perform the music of Bushkin in a program under the musical direction of trumpeter/vocalist Bob Merrill, the late Bushkin's son-in-law.

All Highlights In Jazz concerts also feature a surprise special guest, chosen from among the music's finest players. Some of the biggest stars in jazz who have appeared as guests in previous years have been Eubie Blake, Cab Calloway, Dizzy Gillespie, Savion Glover, Earl Hines, Branford Marsalis, Carmen McRae, Gerry Mulligan, George Shearing, Dr. Billy Taylor, Frank Wess and many others.

IF YOU GO:

Thursday, February 9, 2017 - 8 pm
Highlights In Jazz
44th Anniversary Gala
Vince Giordano and the Nighthawks
Ms. Vinnie Knight
Cynthia Sayer & her Joyride Band
Adrian Cunningham
Mike Weatherly
Larry Eagle

Thursday, March 9, 2017 - 8 pm
Salute to David Amram
Paquito D'Rivera
Jimmy Heath
Earl McIntyre
Bobby Sanabria
David Amram Quartet
with
Kevin Twigg René Hart Adam Amram

Thursday, April 6, 2017 - 8 pm
Women In Jazz
Barbara Carroll
with
Jay Leonhart
René Marie
with
John Chin
Elias Bailey
Quentin Baxter
International Women in Jazz Youth in Action Award Winner - Leonieke Scheuble

Thursday, May 4,2017 - 8 pm
The Joe Bushkin Centenniel
Wycliffe Gordon, Warren Vache, Eric Comstock, Ted Rosenthal
Nicki Parrott, Harry Allen, Steve Johns, Spike Wilner
Musical Director d Bob Merrill

All shows at BMCC TRIBECA Performing Arts Center , Borough of Manhattan Community College , 199 Chambers Street, New York, NY 10007. Visit tribecapac.org for more information.

Box Office at 212-220-1460. Ticket Prices: $50.00; $45.00 (student rate with valid ID) or by mail order; $180.00 for all four concerts. Tickets can be purchased in advance at the box office. You are now able to use your credit card at the Tribeca PAC Box Office located on 199 Chambers Street, or by calling (212) 220-1460 and now online at Tickets.Tribecapac.org.

Please send a check made payable to: Highlights In Jazz

Please mail orders to:
Highlights In Jazz
7 Peter Cooper Road, Apt. 11E New York NY 10010
(Please enclose a self-addressed, stamped envelope)
www.highlightsinjazz.org