NYYS Jazz And Saxophonist Steve Wilson Celebrates Charlie Parker At Jazz At Lincoln Center

The New York Youth Symphony (NYYS) continues its 2019-2020 season with a performance by the 17-member NYYS Jazz ensemble on Monday, March 9, 2020 in two sets at 7:30pm and 9:30pm, at Dizzy's Club, Jazz at Lincoln Center, led by Director Andy Clausen. Titled Celebrating Charlie Parker @ 100, and featuring saxophonist Steve Wilson, the performances pay homage to Charlie Parker's centennial, musical legacy, and bebop innovations with selections by Parker, Wilson, Bennie Moten, Jelly Roll Morton, Duke Ellington, and more. NYYS Jazz will also give the world premiere of the NYYS First Music commission In the Shadow of Tall Giants by Devin Reilly.

Featured soloist Steve Wilson has attained ubiquitous status in the studio and on the stage with the greatest names in jazz, as well as critical acclaim as a bandleader in his own right. A musician's musician, Wilson has brought his distinctive sound to more than 150 recordings led by such celebrated and side-ranging artists as Chick Corea, George Duke, Michael Brecker, Dave Holland, Dianne Reeves, Bill Bruford, Gerald Wilson, Maria Schneider, Joe Henderson, Charlie Byrd, Billy Childs, Karrin Allyson, Don Byron, and Mulgrew Miller among many others. He has also released eight recordings as a leader. Steve Wilson is currently the Associate Professor at the City College of New York, and on faculty at the Juilliard School. He has had artist-in-residence and/or visiting artist at the University of Michigan, the University of Oregon, the University of Maryland, University of North Carolina, the University of Delaware, Le Moyne College, North Carolina Central University, Bowling Green University, Lafayette College, University of Northern Colorado, SUNY New Paltz, Florida State University, California State University at Stanislaus, University of Manitoba, Hamilton College, Old Dominion University, Virginia Commonwealth University, and for the award-winning arts organization CITYFOLK in Dayton, Ohio.

NYYS First Commission Winner Devin Reilly is a San Francisco Bay Area-based composer, guitarist and producer. A 2016 graduate of Cornish College of the Arts, Reilly studied with three-time Latin Grammy nominee Jovino Santos-Neto, world renowned jazz French hornist Tom Varner, and big band composer Jim Knapp.

Reilly writes of his new piece, "In 2016 I visited New York with a backpack and an old Konica FT-1 35mm camera. It was in the high 90s and inescapably humid, but I was twenty-two and traveling alone, so I loved it. Somewhere amidst the week I spent taking composition lessons, meeting musical heroes, and getting lost in the Lower East Side, I jotted down these motifs. New York is an intensely musical city and it brought out in me the first fresh ideas I'd had in months. When I received the commission for First Music last year, I knew it was the perfect opportunity to develop those ideas into a full-length work."

Devin Reilly has worked extensively with the Jim Knapp Orchestra, as well as with San Francisco's Friction Quartet, and members of the Seattle Symphony. Reilly also has had the pleasure of working extensively with Seattle's 5th Avenue Theatre, providing all orchestra music preparation for productions of Ragtime, and Kiss Me Kate; as well as providing original orchestrations for the Rising Star Project and Project Reprise, a collaboration with the University of Washington. In 2018, Devin Reilly recorded his debut EP, Talking in Circles. Due out later this year, the EP draws on influences from traditional and modern big band to chamber and electronic music, to rock and metal. By combining elements of traditional instrumentation and orchestration with modern production techniques, Talking in Circles presents the large ensemble as a contemporary and vital musical format and explores what it means to make a big band record in the 21st century.

NYYS Jazz Director Andy Clausen is a New York-based composer, trombonist, bandleader, and graduate of The Juilliard School. He has performed with Wynton Marsalis, Ron Carter, Benny Golson, Frank Wess, Gerald Wilson, Kurt Elling, The After Midnight Orchestra, Joe Lovano, Bill Frisell, Jason Moran, Dave Douglas, Wayne Horvitz, Andrew D'angelo, John Zorn, The American Brass Quintet, Feist, and My Brightest Diamond. The New York Times has described his work as "sleek, dynamic large-group jazz, a whirl of dark-hued harmony and billowing rhythm...The intelligent sheen of Clausen's writing was as striking as the composure of his peers...It was impressive, and not just by the yardstick of their age." He is a founding member of The Westerlies, a new music brass quartet whose 2014 debut "Wish the Children Would Come on Home: The Music of Wayne Horvitz" was met with critical acclaim from NPR Fresh Air, Jazz Times, and was named the NPR Jazz "Best Debut of 2014." His awards include the Gerald Wilson Prize for Composition from the Monterey Jazz Festival, the Emerging Artist of The Year, and Alternative Jazz Group of the Year Awards from the Earshot Jazz Festival, and the Lotos Foundation Prize. In addition, Clausen has been commissioned by The New York Times, Dell, Bloomberg and Blue Chalk Media to compose music for film and television.