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NIU Office of Public Affairs


News Release

Contact: Mark McGowan, NIU Office of Public Affairs
(815) 753-9472

April 13, 2004

NIU Jazz Ensemble, Liberace Jazztet ready
to swing Peru Jazz Festival

DeKalb — Peruvians are no strangers to the music known as jazz.

Of course, what they consider jazz – a mix of Afro-Cuban and Calypso influences – is what Americans call “Latin jazz.”

So it’s only appropriate that the legendary NIU Jazz Ensemble and the NIU Liberace Jazztet, globe-trotting ambassadors from the Northern Illinois University School of Music, will bring a heavy dose of classic American swing to the stage of this month’s Festival Jazz en Peru.

Both NIU groups, under the direction of Ron Carter, will play two shows at the festival, which begins Monday, April 19, and ends Friday, April 23.

Twenty-two students are making the trip to what Carter calls “a hotbed of music.”

“We’re very excited. None of the students has ever been to South America,” said Carter, director of jazz studies in the NIU School of Music. “It’s been a great experience to play for, and represent American jazz to, other countries. We’re the first U.S. college band invited – this is just the third festival, and it’s grown tremendously – and, being the first group, we’ll show how we teach here and how we pass on this music.”

Carter said the Festival Jazz en Peru committee discovered NIU jazz programs at the 2001 International Association of Jazz Educators conference in New York City and at the 2002 conference in Toronto. Schedules clashed for last spring’s festival, but calendars came together this year.

The NIU Jazz Ensemble, which has enjoyed an outstanding global reputation since its formation in 1969, will perform at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, April 21, and again at 10:30 p.m. Thursday, April 22.

The Liberace Jazztet, founded in 2001 with a generous grant from the Liberace Foundation for the Performing and Creative Arts, plays at 9:30 p.m. Monday, April 19, and at 5 p.m. Wednesday, April 21. Members of the Liberace also will back vocalist Kathleen Grace, a rising star of the Los Angeles jazz scene who won this year’s Montreaux Jazz Festival Voice Competition in Switzerland.

Carter, a saxophonist, and Paul Bauer, director of the NIU School of Music and a bass trombonist, will join some of the NIU students in performances with a group of Peruvian jazz all-stars.

Carter also will lead several jazz clinics while in Peru – “They want to learn more about American jazz, and I’ll get an opportunity to sample some of their culture,” he said – while NIU colleague Ronnie Wooten will teach a clinic nearby for high school wind ensemble students.

The trip to Peru comes during a busy spring for the young performers, most of whom will spend the week of April 13 on a Midwestern tour with Byron Stripling, who formerly played with the Basie Orchestra, the GRP Big Band and the Carnegie Hall Jazz Band. The tour visits Lisle and Springfield as well as the Holmes Student Center Duke Ellington Ballroom on the NIU campus, where the ensemble performs at 8 p.m. Thursday, April 15.

The NIU Jazz Ensemble also played recent concerts in Chicago, St. Charles and Milwaukee, performing at different times with Chicago jazz trumpeter Orbert Davis, NIU jazz piano instructor Willie Pickens and Tom Garling, jazz trombonist known for his work with Maynard Ferguson.

For more information, call (815) 753-1546 or visit http://www.jazzperu.org/english/festival/english_festival.htm online.

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