Famed East Coast saxophonist Michael Marcus will perform The Music of Ornette Coleman at 8 p.m. on Thursday, March 23 in CMC's Pickford Auditorium, concluding the spring semester open jazz concert series. The event, for students enrolled in the ID 109 course as well as other Claremont music enthusiasts, is free and open to the greater public.
Marcus' performance will explore compositions by jazz icon Coleman in an American Jazz Institute setting that includes bassist Putter Smith, drummer Joe La Barbera, and trombonist Dave Woodley. Marcus will delve into Coleman's late 1950s and early '60s jazz compositions. The new setting of Coleman's music is contributed by AJI director Mark Masters, whose arrangements leave ample room for Marcus and other musicians to explore all facets of Coleman's songs, as well as a framework that uses Coleman's songs as an embarkation point to creation of new ideas grounded in Coleman's groundbreaking music.
Marcus has worked with a number of artists including Jacki Byard, Grachan Moncur III, and Sonny Simmons.
For more information about this event, contact Ron Teeples, CMC's Boswell Professor of Economics: 909-607-2946, or rteeples@claremontmckenna.edu.