Join the Sousa Archives and the Champaign-Urbana community’s celebration of UNESCO’s International Jazz Day on April 24 (2:00 to 7:00pm) and listen to the ways sax players (tenor sax players in particular) have fallen in love with both the instrument and the repertoire. Four featured performers — Randy Salman, Reginald Lewis, Grace Calderon and Chip McNeill, each accompanied by a rhythm section—will talk about one of their first jazz crushes and how that puppy love grew into a serious, long-term relationship. After each player talks and performs individually, they’ll all come together in a jazz jam that’ll blow us out of the hall . . . and over to the Rose Bowl Tavern for an afterglow performance.
Hosting the tenorfest will be Chip McNeill, who chairs Jazz Studies at the U of I and currently tours both with Grammy-winning vocalist Natalie Cole and with Doc Severinsen and the Tonight Show Band. Earlier he was musical director and tenor saxophonist for Arturo Sandoval as well as for legendary trumpeter Maynard Ferguson.
Tenor Titans: In the Footsteps of Bean, Prez, & Trane* is presented in conjunction with The Imperfect Saxophone, an exhibition at the Sousa Archives and Center for American Music that looks at America’s complex social and cultural relationship with the saxophone during a period known as the “saxophone craze.”
The Events
Tenor Titans: In the Footsteps of Bean, Prez, & Trane, live music in the Knight Auditorium, Spurlock Museum (600 S Gregory, Urbana), Sunday April 24 from 2:00 to 3:30 pm, free and open to the public.
Afterglow Performance with our featured performers, Rose Bowl Tavern (106 N Race, Urbana), Sunday April 24 from 5:00-7:00 pm, free and open to the public (tips appreciated). Beverages & snacks available for purchase.
The Imperfect Saxophone: Not Just a Clown’s Instrument, Sousa Archives and Center for American Music (1103 S Sixth, Champaign) now through May 15, free and open to the public.
*Aficionados frequently refer to jazz greats Coleman Hawkins, Lester Young, and John Coltrane respectively by these nicknames.