Saturday Night Jazz Jamboree with Saxophonist David Liebman
and SMTD Students and Faculty

April 2010

Dave Liebman, jazz saxophonist, will be in town on Saturday, April 17, for a performance at Stamps Auditorium at 8:00 p.m. Two of Liebman’s works will receive world premieres: Inner Voices, arranged by faculty Andrew Bishop, and Le Roi du Monde, arranged by Ellen Rowe and U-M jazz students. Other works by Bishop, Rowe, Ed Sarath and Jim McNeely, Grammy-nominated jazz composer and pianist, will be on the program.

The concert will feature the diversity of Liebman’s music, ranging from his introspective chromatic works, arranged by Rowe and Bishop, to hard-driving, straight-ahead jazz. His work for woodwind quartet, Remembrances, will feature U-M faculty, Amy Porter, flute, Nancy Ambrose King, oboe, Jeffrey Lyman, bassoon, and graduate student Cecilia Kang. Adam Unsworth, horn, Michael Gould, vibraphone (Inner Voices) and percussion (Le Roi), and Robert Hurst, bass will also play that night.

Also on tap: performances of McNeely’s updated version of Louis Prima’s Sing, Sing, Sing, conducted by Dennis Wilson, who performed on the original recording, and a performance of Ed Sarath’s Rites of Passage, featuring Liebman, who commissioned the work.

Liebman, who was part of the early jazz fusion movement, played with Miles Davis for four years. He toured with Chick Corea before forming his own David Liebman Quintet. He was the first improviser to perform with the Ensemble Intercontemporain, founded by Pierre Boulez and has consistently placed among the top finalists in the Downbeat Critics’ Poll. While in town, Liebman will run a master class with students in jazz and improvisation.