The Jacquet festival offers students and directors a great opportunity to explore jazz or improve their skills. The festival provides participating students and directors with an individual focus, with sessions on improvisation, small groups, master classes with our faculty and guest artists, and a concert by participants in the late afternoon led by our faculty.
We welcome entire ensembles, combos or big bands, to participate in a daylong clinic, or individual students to attend and play in a combo coached by an MTSU faculty member. The cost for individual students is $20, the group/ensemble rate is $200. This includes a pizza lunch and tickets to the evening concert at 7:30pm.
Registration is at this site: http://www.mtsu.edu/music/jazzfest.php. The registration deadline is Monday, March 12.
Our featured guest artists are drummer MATT WILSON, one of the trend-setters in contemporary jazz, and GARY WITTNER, internationally known guitarist and specialist in the music of THELONIOUS MONK.
For more information on these artists, visit: http://www.mattwilsonjazz.com/ and http://garywittner.com/pages/home.html for more information onthese great artists. The festival is presented with the support of the Illinois Jacquet Foundation, created to honor thememory of Illinois Jacquet, the great tenor saxophonist and bandleader who came to fame with the Count Basie and Lionel Hampton orchestras of the 1940s.
The following is the Jacquet Jazz Festival schedule:
8:30 Registration/check in/welcome in Hinton Hall
9:00 – 10:15 Jazz style and combo/improvisation session #1
10:20 – 11:30 Jazz clinic with the MTSU jazz faculty
12:00 – 12:30 Pizza lunch and Jazz Ensemble II concert with guest guitarist Gary Wittner
12:30 – 2:00 Jazz style and combo/improvisation session #2
2:10 – 3:10 Matt Wilson jazz clinic
4:00 – 5:00 Student participants combo and/or ensemble concert
7:30 Concert by the MTSU Faculty Jazztet and Jazz Ensemble I with guest artist Matt Wilson
We look forward to seeing you and your students at the MTSU Illinois Jacquet Jazz Festival!