Jazzin' with the Classics by Candlelight for Christmas
$15-$25 suggested donation (age 18 & under free)
Gail Pettis, vocals
Tom Collier, vibraphone
Martin Lund, piano / clarinet / flute
Jeffrey Cohan, flute
Joined by jazz singer Gail Pettis, vibraphonist Tom Collier, flutist Jeffrey Cohan and jazz pianist, clarinetist, and flutist Martin Lund join together for the fifth year in an effort to to bridge contemporary improvisational jazz and the art music of baroque and renaissance times. Instrumental musicians have "jazzed up" melodies familiar to them in the style of their day for centuries, and this team's virtuoso improvisations on Yuletide favorites, and their renditions of classical standards will bring together the best of jazz and classical worlds. Each year's program is completely new.
In memory of George Shangrow, the 10th annual Candlelight Concerts continues a tradition which George and Jeffrey Cohan initiated in June 2010, and in countless past Candlelight Evenings of Baroque music and festive holiday chamber music celebrations in Seattle over four decades. Chamber music both familiar and new is performed by some of the Northwest’s finest musicians, many of them colleagues of Maestro Shangrow.
Suggested donation $15, $20, $25 (a free will offering – everyone welcome!). Youth 18 and under FREE. A reception follows each performance.
About the artists
GAIL PETTIS
Named ” 2010 Northwest Vocalist of the Year,” by Earshot Jazz Society, (also 2007), Gail’s rich, warm vocals and understated phrasing have been described as “deliciously soulful” by Cadence Magazine. A native of Henderson, Kentucky, Gail grew up in Gary, Indiana. Grandfather Arthur Pettis was a blues singer and guitarist who recorded for Victor Records in Memphis in 1928 and for Brunswick in Chicago in 1930 and grandmother Ninevah played piano around Chicago. Having completed an orthodontic residency program at Harvard University, after which she taught and practiced orthodontics full-time for the next 15 years, Gail moved to Seattle WA in 1996 by way of Memphis, TN, discovered jazz and sold her orthodontic practice ten years later. As artist-in-residence at the Amersfoort Jazz Festival in the Netherlands in 2006, she was featured artist with the New Manhattan Big Band, also Eddie Conard and the Dutch Jazz Cats on the mainstage and smaller combs in venues in Amersfoort and Harderwijk. Included on this tour was a stop in Kobe, Japan to perform as a guest artist at KAVC Hall as First Place winner of the Seattle-Kobe Female Jazz Vocalist Audition. She has also performed at the Gene Harris Jazz Festival in Boise, Idaho, Jazz at the River Festival in Eagle, ID. Most recently, Gail completed Russian tours in the spring of 2015, performing in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Novosibirsk, Ufa, Ivanova and Perm and returning in the summer for a tour anchored by the White Nights Jazz Festival.
Gail’s debut CD, May I Come In? (Origin/OA2 Records, 2007), was given a warm reception by XM Satellite Radio and Music Choice Television as well as by stations across the United States and in Germany and Portugal. This recording was nominated for Earshot’s Golden Ear award “2007 Northwest Recording of the Year”. The eagerly awaited sophomore recording, Here in the Moment, was released in January 2010 on Origin/OA2 Records. Gail’s refreshing readings of standard songs on this project have been embraced by listeners, resulting in a 14-week stay (peaking at #5) on the JazzWeek National Airplay Chart, ending up as the most played new female vocal CD on American jazz radio in that year. Gail has also contributed vocals to Grammy-nominated CD Colabs, has song credits in major motion pictures and her voiceover and jingle work can currently be heard on radio and television.
Earshot Jazz describes Gail as going “…from strength to strength, performing a winning, crowd-involving style of vocal jazz.”
MARTIN LUND
Martin Lund, an extremely diverse musician, has played with some of the great blues artists of our time and worked in the studios of LA as a composer, arranger and musician with artists like Mel Torme and Isacc Hayes. His eclectic background has allowed him to move freely through any style of music from classical to rock and from jazz to Broadway. He is equally adept at clarinet, saxophone, flute and piano. Martin is a well-known performer and teacher who produces one of Orcas Island's most popular summer music events, the Orcas Island Jazz Festival bringing in top talent from around the northwest and beyond. Martin graduated from the University of Washington with a BA in both music and music education.
TOM COLLIER
Director of percussion studies at the University of Washington School of Music since 1980, Tom Collier is a veteran of more than 50 years in music – his first public appearance was at age five, on xylophone, and his first professional performances were made as a nine-year-old marimba virtuoso. Tom has since performed and recorded with his own jazz group and many important classical, jazz, and popular artists, including Bill Frisell, Frank Zappa, Shelly Manne, Laurindo Almeida, Natalie Cole, Mannheim Steamroller, Sammy Davis, Jr., Barbra Streisand, Johnny Mathis, Olivia Newton-John, The Beach Boys, and too many more to name. In the classical arena, Collier has appeared as guest soloist with the Seattle Symphony and many other orchestras, and as percussionist with the Los Angeles Repertoire Orchestra, L.A. Contempo Four, and the Northwest Chamber Orchestra. He has presented over 300 jazz concerts in public schools around Washington State for the Arts In Education Program under the auspices of that state's Arts Commission. Collier has released several albums as leader or co-leader beginning with Inner City Records in 1981 and continuing through the present. In 2014, he was awarded a Royalty Research Grant by the University to produce three new recordings in three different settings. In addition, he has recorded several educational albums for Music Minus One and Studio 4 Music. In 1980, Collier was presented with an "Outstanding Service To Jazz Education" award by the National Association of Jazz Educators, and over the past 30 years, he has won twenty five ASCAP Popular Panel and ASCAPlus Awards for his various jazz and percussion compositions. In 2011, the prestigious Adelaide D. Currie Cole Endowed Professorship in the University of Washington School of Music was awarded to Professor Collier for the academic years 2011-2013.
JEFFREY COHAN
Flutist Jeffrey Cohan has performed as soloist in 25 countries, both on modern and early transverse flutes from the Renaissance through the present. The winner of many competitions and awards, he has performed throughout Europe, Australia, New Zealand, and the United States, and worldwide for the USIA Arts America Program. Many works have been written for and premiered by him, including five new flute concerti since 2000. He is artistic director of the Capitol Hill Chamber Music Festival in Washington, DC, the Black Hawk Chamber Music Festival in the Midwest, and the Salish Sea Early Music Festival in the Pacific Northwest. He can "play many superstar flutists one might name under the table" according to The New York Times and is “The Flute Master” (headline) according to the Boston Globe.