INFORMATION FOR
The legendary Billy Taylor Trio will perform on July 23 during William Paterson University’s 17th annual Summer Jazz Week from July 19 to 23 in Shea Center for Performing Arts on the campus in Wayne. Taylor will join Summer Jazz for the eighth consecutive year. Also featured during the weeklong concert series are drummer Rich DeRosa and Friends, with Jim McNeely, Marcus McLaurine and David Demsey; the Dick Meldonian Quartet; vocalist Vanessa Rubin with the William Paterson University Summer Big Band, directed by Steve Marcone; and trumpeter Dominick Farinacci.The concerts are held in conjunction with the University’s Summer Jazz Improvisation Workshop for high school and college students. All students will participate in hands-on, small group sessions with guest artists as well as morning classes, afternoon performance sessions and clinics. On Saturday, July 24 the workshop will conclude with a free admission 1 p.m. concert featuring the workshop’s student ensembles.Summer Jazz Week features concerts every evening at 7:30 p.m. from Monday, July 19 through Friday, July 23 in Shea Center for the Performing Arts on campus. A $15 pass for the entire week may be purchased prior to Monday evening’s concert or single tickets may be purchased for $4.Summer Jazz Week, which has drawn thousands of jazz fans to the University’s campus during the past 16 summers, is designed to make jazz more accessible to the community. William Paterson has been a flagship of jazz education for more than 30 years and is recognized for its internationally known Jazz Studies Program and nationally acclaimed Jazz Room Series of concerts each fall and spring.The festival opens on Monday, July 19 with a University faculty concert featuring drummer Rich DeRosa, associate professor of music at William Paterson, performing his original compositions and arrangements assisted by an all-star faculty lineup. DeRosa is a veteran of tours and recordings with such artists as Gerry Mulligan, Bob Brookmeyer, Susannah McCorkle and Roy Kral. He has arranged music for performance and recordings for Wynton Marsalis and the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, the Gerry Mulligan and Glenn Miller big bands and vocalist Susannah McCorkle. DeRosa has also composed for television shows including “The Guiding Light,” and “As the World Turns;” commercials for Kodak; and works for the theater company ArtsPower that have been performed throughout the U.S.Tuesday, July 20, is Swing Night with the Dick Meldonian Quartet. Meldonian, a saxophonist, has performed with Sarah Vaughn, Bing Crosby, Tony Bennett and Cab Calloway. He has toured and recorded with bug bands led by Stan Kenton, Gene Roland, Bill Holman, Charlie Barnet, Shorty Rogers and Neal Hefti. Meldonian is best known as the leader of the quartet The Jersey Swingers in the 1970s and his big band co-led with Sonny Igoe. The performance on Wednesday, July 21, will feature vocalist Vanessa Rubin. Essence magazine labeled her a “Diva Nouvelles” performer and she achieved universal acceptance after being taken under the wing of such grandmasters as Frank Fosters and Barry Harris in the New York jazz community in the 1980s. Rubin has recorded with a wide array of artists such as Monty Alexander, Steve Turre, Herbie Hancock, James Williams, Etta Jones and Toots Thielemans and has toured with Herbie Hancock, the Woody Herman Orchestra and the Jazz Crusaders. Rubin’s talents are not limited to vocals; she has experience as a producer, arranger and music business consultant and facilitator. Trumpeter Dominick Farinacci will perform on Thursday, July 22. He has already recorded six CDs on the Japanese M&I label and won various awards for his recordings in Japan and the U.S. Farinacci has just released his first U.S. CD, Lovers, Tales and Dances, on Koch Records. The concert will feature music from the new CD, described by Farinacci as "music that has become closest to my heart over the years.” Included are songs written by international composers from the U.S., Argentina, Brazil, Italy, France and Japan.The Billy Taylor Trio will bring Summer Jazz Week 2010 to a conclusion on Friday, July 23. Taylor, one of the founding fathers of jazz education, made national news last year at the William Paterson concert for the celebration of his 88th birthday, and this concert will take place the evening before his 89th birthday. Dr. Taylor is a performer, composer, educator, author and broadcast media personality, known for his work on “CBS Sunday Morning” and National Public Radio, hosting “Billy Taylor’s Jazz from the Kennedy Center,” and earlier the “David Frost Show.” He has played and recorded with many legendary performers since the 1950s, and earned a doctorate from the University of Massachusetts in addition to his 16 honorary degrees.
William Paterson’s Summer Jazz Week is funded, in part, by a grant from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts/Department of State, and a grant from the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation.For more information, contact the Shea Center Box Office at 973-720-2371. # # #
