Director’s Notes: Dan Aldag on the Jazz Orchestra

The Jazz Orchestra will perform the second half of the concert, playing "Blue Opening," "Milestones," "Meetin' Time," "Prodigal Son Revisited" and"Fables of Faubus."

"Blue Opening," composed by Ike Sturm, combines blues harmonies and inflections with a hip-hop beat, creating something that is simultaneously both old and raw and new and sleek. It was composed by Ike Sturm, a young bassist who is the music director for jazz at St. Peter's Church in Manhattan, the famed "jazz church," where he composes and performsoriginal music for weekly jazz services. "Blue Opening" was arranged for jazz orchestra by Ike Sturm's father Fred, a noted jazz arranger and educator.

"Prodigal Son Revisited" was composed by Wayne Horvitz, a Seattle-based composer, pianist and electronic musician who has performed with many ofthe leading lights of the jazz avant-garde and composed music for everyone from the Kronos Quartet and choreographer Paul Taylor to Gus Van Sandt'sremake of "Psycho."

Besides these two contemporary works, the Jazz Orchestra will play three pieces that, each in their own way, deal with the jazz tradition. "Meetin' Time" is the exact arrangement played by the Count Basie Orchestra on their 1960 album Kansas City Suite. All of the music on that album was composed by the legendary alto saxophonist and composer Benny Carter, and was about some place or event in Kansas City, where the Basie band got its start. "Meetin' Time" evokes the sounds of a church service.

"Milestones" is a classic Miles Davis tune in a brand-new arrangement by Mike Tomaro.

"Fables of Faubus" is Charles Mingus's caustic and uproarious "tribute" to Orval Faubus, the Arkansas governor of the mid-1950s who, in 1957, defied the United States Supreme Court by ordering the Arkansas National Guard to stop African American youngsters from desegregating Central High School in Little Rock. The Jazz Orchestra will perform the arrangement created for the Mingus Big Band, a group formed after Mingus's death by his widow Sue,which is dedicated to keeping Mingus's music alive.

Featured soloists on the concert will include saxophonists Sky Miller and Steve Alton, trombonist Talon Nansel, trumpeters Ari Davie and TristanKadish and pianist Jeff Kroeger.