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July
12
7:00pm
Chuck Mangione
For more than five decades, Chuck Mangione's love affair
with music has been characterized by his boundless energy, unabashed
enthusiasm, and pure joy that radiates from the stage.
Mangione first attracted attention with his brother, Gap, in a mainstream
jazz band, The Jazz Brothers, in which he played trumpet much like
that of the man who he refers to as his musical father-Dizzy Gillespie.
In fact Dizzy gave
Chuck an 'updo' horn just like his own.
Chuck's years with the Jazz Brothers overlapped with his attending
the Eastman School of Music and eventually resulted in his solo album
debut. Chuck left home to play with Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers,
assuming the trumpet chair that had belonged to such great players
as Clifford Brown, Kenny Dorham, Bill Hardman, Lee Morgan and Freddie
Hubbard.
Another important step in Mangione's career development was his return
to the Eastman School of Music as director of the school's Jazz Ensemble.
His "Friends & Love" concert with the Rochester Philharmonic
Orchestra was recorded
live and featured "Hill Where the Lord Hides." This led
to a recording contract with a major label, Mercury records, and his
first Grammy nomination.
Those early years with Mercury culminated in the title tune of one
of Mangione's most popular albums. Land of Make Believe, another Grammy
nominee, Mangione then signed with A&M Records and delivered two
extremely successful releases in one year, Chase The Clouds Away,
which was used as background music during the telecast of the 1976
Olympic Games; and Bellavia ("beautiful way"), named to
honor his mother, which won Mangione his first Grammy award.
During the late 1970's, Chuck received more awards and accolades for
his recordings. He reached new heights with his mega-hit single and
album, Feels So Good. The 1980 Mangione entry in Current Biography
called "Feels So Good" the most recognized melody since
the Beatles' "Michelle." The Children of Sanchez double-album
soundtrack won the Hollywood Foreign Press Association's Golden Globe
Award, then earned Mangione a second Grammy award.
In 1980 maximum impact was achieved in front of an "intimate"
television of several hundred million when Chuck's "Give It All
You Got" was heard around the world as the theme of the Winter
Olympics in Lake Placid which he performed live at the closing ceremonies.
Mangione was also busy with personal projects during the 1980's. He
hosted an 8-hour concert featuring jazz legends Dizzy Gillespie and
Chick Corea, which benefited the Italian earthquake Relief Fund.
The '80's were exceptionally full years for Chuck. Having signed with
Columbia Records he released several albums, including Love Notes,
Journey To A Rainbow, Disguise, and Save Tonight For Me. Another highlight
was working out
with the New York Yankees at their spring training camp at the invitation
of his friend and fan, George Steinbrenner. Chuck was often seen playing
the National Anthem at Yankee Stadium and All Star games in San Francisco
and Chicago. There was also "Salute to Chuck Mangione" a
one-hour TV special hosted by Dick Clark; numerous performing and
conducting dates with symphony orchestras across the country, plus
television interviews on The Tonight Show, Larry King, Soul Train,
Solid Gold, and many others.
In 1989, Chuck released two live albums, "The Boys From Rochester,"
featuring Steve Gadd, Gap Mangione, Joe Romano and frank Pullara,
plus a double album, Chuck Mangione Live at the Village Gate. Following
these releases, and more than 25 years of one-nighters around the
world, Chuck Mangione stopped playing.
Many people point to the death of Dizzy Gillespie as the event that
propelled Mangione back into music. In 1994 chuck scheduled a whirlwind
of activity that included recording sessions for two new albums, a
series of nightclub performances by himself and other jazz favorites
which featured his "Cat in the Hat" matinees for kids (they
continue to draw SRO audiences and raves from critics, parents and
kids alike). Four major orchestra dates in upstate New York helped
create an endowment fund in honor of his father, Papa Mangione, and
musical father Dizzy Gillespie, for the Rochester School of the Arts.
Chuck is currently caricatured on the Fox TV hit show, King Of The
Hill.He is the celebrity spokesman for "Mega-lo-mart" and
scored the music for the 1998 Valentine's Day episode.
When Chuck performed in Poland for the 1999 Film and Jazz Festival,
his composition "Children of Sanchez" brought the audience
to its feet. Unbeknownst to the composer, the piece had become somewhat
of an anthem during the struggle for democracy and many in the audience
were in tears, holding their hands over their hearts.
In the year 2000 Chuck made his first ever appearance in Korea to
SRO audiences where Feels So Good has been the top requested instrumental
hit for the past twenty years. He returned to Seoul in 2001 and was
performing there when 9/11 happened.
Chuck has recorded two albums for Chesky Records. The Feelings Back
& Everything For Love.
His 60th Birthday Bash Concert at the Eastman Theater in Rochester
New York raised over $50,000 for St. John's Nursing Home.
Recently Smooth Jazz stations throughout the U.S. recognized Chuck
Mangione's "Feels So Good" as their all time #1 song.
Click here to learn more
about Chuck Mangione.
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August
30
5:30 PM
Asleep
at the Wheel
Can
a wheel reinvent itself while it’s still rolling?
Sounds like an impossible task -- but you never want to say “impossible”
to Asleep at the Wheel, the famed western-swing, boogie, and roots-music
outfit that’s, amazingly,
still on the upswing. That’s saying something, too, considering
the group’s been around
for more than 37 years, turning out an incredible three dozen albums
while playing an unrelenting schedule of one-nighters that would make
a vaudevillian dizzy.
“In terms of how many people we played for, what we accomplished,
and how
much money we made – well, we didn’t make any money, but
we grossed a lot – ‘06 was absolutely our best year ever,”
says Wheel founder and front man Ray Benson with a chuckle.
And even as the Wheel rolled on, the reinvention had begun. You could
see and
hear it in their live shows, where new vocalist Elizabeth McQueen invited
comparison with the classic female vocalists of the band’s earlier
era, and fiddler-singer Jason Roberts gave the band a second male lead
voice to complement Benson’s immediately identifiable baritone.
These days, the reinvented Wheel is also rolling down a couple of new
avenues.
One involves to the critically acclaimed musical play, A Ride With Bob,
which stars Benson as himself -- encountering the ghost of Bob Wills
on a tour bus – Roberts as the young Wills, and McQueen as Minnie
Pearl and other famed entertainment figures, with the rest of the band
members featured as well. Originally designed as a one-off celebration
of Wills’ 100th birthday in ’05, A Ride With Bob quickly
took on a life of its own and, notes Benson, “it’s absolutely
a part of what we do now.”
Another innovation in the Wheel’s career is an ever-increasing
series of
philharmonic concerts, in which the group plays a concert with a symphony
orchestra. Begun in 2003 in Texas, this particular facet of the band
was showcased before concertgoers in California and Colorado in 2007.
In addition, the band’s new look is spotlighted in a new disc
– called,
appropriately enough, Reinventing the Wheel. The 12-cut celebration
of American – particularly Southwestern – music features
guest appearances by gospel’s Blind Boys of Alabama (splendidly
reworking of the old Wills tune “The Devil Ain’t Lazy”)
and banjoist Rolf Sieker, along with lead vocals by McQueen and Roberts
as well as Benson, whose voice has been synonymous with Asleep at the
Wheel for decades.
“I carried the load for many, many years, but I just wanted to
have a band, as
opposed to Ray Benson and Asleep at the Wheel,” Benson explains.
“That’s what we had in the ‘70s – a band, a
revue kind of deal, which was the whole concept. But trying to replace
a Chris O’Connell was very difficult. And then Elizabeth walks
up, and boom – here’s my girl singer. And then I kept pushing
Jason, both through the play and through the band, saying, `Man, you’ve
got talent. You can sing. You’ve got the golden ear – just
apply it to your singing and songwriting.’”
Roberts, who’s been the Wheel’s full-time fiddler since
1994, welcomed the
opportunity to be a part of the revamped, revue-style Wheel. He even
landed one of his own compositions on the new disc. Called “Am
I Right (or Amarillo),” it is, he says, “kind of a little
tip of the hat to Loretta Lynn.”
“I think everybody got a chance to put their two cents in, and
bring to the table
what they had, ” he adds, referring to the process that led to
Reinventing the Wheel. “God bless Ray Benson for allowing us to
do that. We all know that it’s his band, and he doesn’t
have to do anything he doesn’t want to do.”
What the band does on this disc is something few others could. In addition
to
original numbers from Benson (the playfully randy “Hot Like That”)
and Roberts, the band pulls its Reinventing the Wheel tracks from a
dizzying variety of sources,
stretching from Tin Pan Alley to Texas – and makes every one of
them its own. Among the songwriters represented on Reinventing are blues-jazz
great Mose Allison (“Your Mind Is on Vacation”), the Marshall
Tucker Band’s Toy Caldwell (“This Old Cowboy,” a postmodern
cowboy tune driven home by Benson’s world-weary vocals and the
propulsive drumming of David Sanger), jump-blues innovator Louis Jordan
(“Saturday Night Fish Fry”) and outlaw-country legend Guy
Clark (whom Benson calls his favorite poet), contributing an exquisite
fable of faith and belief called “The Cape.” Roberts and
McQueen recall the classic era of Tennessee Ernie Ford and Kay Star
with a spirited team vocal on “You’re My Sugar,” and
McQueen takes center stage on a couple of American-songbook classics,
“I Don’t Care if the Sun Don’t Shine” and “I’m
an Old Cow Hand (from the Rio Grande).”
Notes McQueen, “One of the things about Asleep at the Wheel is
that they always
have great musicians. That’s what they’re known for. So
for them to ask me to join and then to keep me in the band, and to let
me step out a little more and stand in the shoes of Chris O’Connell
and Maryann Price, who were amazing singers – that’s an
incredible honor. It’s above and beyond my greatest expectations.”
So, whether your next encounter with Asleep at the Wheel is at a dance
or concert, via the new disc, or at a live production of A Ride with
Bob, you’ll be witnessing something very special -- a band that’s
not only been entertaining audiences with its own genre-busting music
for nearly four decades, but also a group that’s never been afraid
to try something new -- including a reinvention, inspired by the past,
that rolls joyously toward a long and shining future. –
Click here to learn more
about Asleep at the Wheel.
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September
6
5:30 pm
UNITED STATES AIR FORCE LIBERTY JAZZ BAND
Free Concert ~ No Tickets
Required
 From
the swingin’ sounds of Glenn Miller to the best of contemporary
big band jazz, the United States Air Force Liberty Big Band plays it
all with style and sophistication. Part of the United States Air Force
Band of Liberty from Hanscom Air Force Base outside Boston, this stellar
ensemble has been entertaining audiences throughout the Northeast for
more than a quarter century. Made up of 18 outstanding musicians from
around the country, the Liberty Big Band takes pride in preserving the
heritage of America’s true art form -- jazz.
One of the few traveling big bands still around, the Liberty Big Band
regularly performs for audiences throughout New England, New York and
New Jersey. They have been featured at the Syracuse (NY), Corning (NY),
Lewiston (NY), and Manchester (NH) Jazz Festivals and have shared the
stage with jazz artists such as John Pizzarelli, Gary Smulyan, Byron
Stripling, Greg Hopkins, Jiggs Whigam, and Billy Pierce. The band also
had the privilege to work with Jack Jones, Maureen McGovern, and Ann
Hampton Callaway at City Hall Plaza in Boston. Paying homage to the
great big bands of Basie, Ellington, Kenton and Goodman the Liberty
Big Band also spotlights the works of modern composers such as Maria
Schneider, Mike Crotty, Sandy Megas and Brett Zvzcek.
So whether you want to walk down memory lane to the sounds of the great
big band era or check out some of the new sounds of today, the United
States Air Force Liberty Big Band has something for jazz lovers of all
ages.
Click here to learn more
about the United States Air Force Liberty Jazz Band.
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