Tuesday, May 27, 2003

WILMINGTON, NC—The UNCW Department of Music is sponsoring a series of concerts as part of its Summer Jazz Workshop scheduled for Sunday, June 22, through Saturday, June 28.

The Cape Fear Jazz Orchestra will present the first concert in the series on Monday, June 23; a performance by the UNCW Jazz Faculty Combo is set for Tuesday, June 24. The final concert, scheduled for Saturday, June 28, will feature jazz workshop students in both small and large ensembles. All performances will be at 7:30 p.m. in Kenan Auditorium. Admission to the Cape Fear Jazz Orchestra and the UNCW Jazz Faculty Combo concerts is $5. The student performances are free.

The UNCW Summer Jazz Workshop, directed by Frank Bongiorno, chair of the Music Department, provides middle and high school students from throughout the state and abroad a week of intensive jazz study and interaction with the department’s jazz faculty and guest artists. Students’ daily schedule will include basic jazz theory and improvisation classes for beginner, intermediate and advanced practitioners; an overview of jazz history; and master classes on each instrument of the jazz ensemble.

UNCW faculty member Jerald Shynett leads the Cape Fear Jazz Orchestra with assistance from Bongiorno. Formed in the spring of 2002, the orchestra was established to perpetuate the music of composers and arrangers from the Carolinas. The June 23 concert will feature music by Shynett as well as North Carolina composers.

Members of the UNCW Jazz Faculty Combo maintain a busy performance schedule as soloists as well as recording and supportive musicians. They are also active clinicians who are dedicated to the pedagogy and perpetuation of jazz as an art form.

For more information, contact the UNCW Department of Music at 910/962-3390.