Coming Home with the HSU Jazz Orchestra and Symphonic Band

The HSU Jazz Orchestra will feature compositions by a homegrown talent and a current HSU student in a joint concert with the HSU Symphonic Band on Saturday, February 24 in the Fulkerson Recital Hall.

The Jazz Orchestra will debut the big band arrangement of “Alone in the Fishbowl” by Eureka High School and HSU graduate Jared Coyle. “He wrote this for a band he played in while he was an HSU student, called Mr. Lunch,” Jazz Orchestra director and HSU music teacher Dan Aldag said. Coyle now lives outside Portland, Oregon.

The orchestra will also reprise "Song For Yong Zoo" by HSU senior, Youn Joo Sim. “The Jazz Orchestra plays all of the students’ final projects from the Jazz Arranging class,” Aldag explains, “and two years ago, when we read Youn Joo’s song, it immediately jumped out at everybody as an exceptional piece. We played it the next semester, and we’re reviving it now.” The Orchestra will play it one more time, for Youn Joo’s Senior Recital this spring.

Also back by popular demand—and with another HSU connection—the Jazz Orchestra will play a Charles Mingus tune (“E’s Flat, Ahs Flat Too”) arranged by Tommy Obeso, a long-time member of the orchestra who is student teaching this semester.

The evening gets started with music by four American composers played by the HSU Symphonic Band, directed by HSU Assistant Professor of Music Paul Cummings. “American Salute” by Pulitzer Prize winner Morton Gould is a “classic band and orchestra piece,” Cummings said, based on the American Civil War tune, “When Johnny Comes Marching Home.”

“Third Suite” by contemporary American composer Robert E. Jager features rapid meter changes, and “is fun to play,” Cummings said. On the other hand, “Final Testament” by Fisher Tull is “ a very dramatic and expressive piece. He has a very distinct harmonic style. You can tell a Fisher Tull piece within the first thirty seconds.” “Final Testament” will be conducted by Kenneth Ayoob, HSU Music Department chair and conductor of the Humboldt Symphony.

The Symphonic Band’s final piece is “Scenes From the Louvre” by another Pulitzer-Prize winning American composer, Norman Dello Joio. It was originally written for a TV series about the famous Parisian art museum, and each movement suggests a different section of the Louvre.

Then the Jazz Orchestra takes the stage, with renditions of “Jackson County Jubilee” by jazz great Benny Carter, and “The Jody Grind” by Horace Silver, as arranged by John Clayton, before playing the Jared Coyle and Youn Joo Sim tunes, and the Tommy Obeso arrangement.

This joint concert gets underway at 8 PM on Saturday, February 24 in the Fulkerson Recital Hall on the HSU campus. $6 general, $2 students and seniors, HSU students free with ID. Tickets from HSU Box Office (826-3928) or at the door.

Media: Eureka Times-Standard, Eureka Reporter.