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Please join us for a special concert on Tuesday, February 27th, at the Lied Center with KU Jazz Ensemble I and special guest Vincent Gardner, trombone.About Vincent Gardner:
Raised in Hampton, Virginia, Gardner was born in Chicago in 1972. After much early musical exposure singing and playing piano, violin, saxophone, and French horn, he ultimately decided to pursue the trombone at the age of 12. Vincent attended Florida A&M University and the University of North Florida where he majored in jazz studies and graduated in 1996. He earned his master’s degree in jazz history and research from Rutgers University in 2013. While at Florida A&M, he caught the ear of Mercer Ellington, who hired Gardner for his first professional job. After college, he moved to Brooklyn, New York. One of his first jobs was a world tour with Lauryn Hill, then in 2000, he joined the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra. Vincent has served as instructor at The Juilliard School, as visiting instructor at Florida State and Michigan State universities, and as adjunct instructor at The New School. Most recently he completed a four-year tenure as Trombone Instructor at Northwestern University.
An accomplished composer and arranger, he has contributed many arrangements to the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra and other ensembles. In 2009, he was commissioned by Jazz at Lincoln Center to compose “The Jesse B. Semple Suite,” a 60-minute piece inspired by the short stories of Langston Hughes. Vincent is featured on a number of notable recordings and has recorded five CDs as a bandleader for Steeplechase Records. He has performed with The Duke Ellington Orchestra, Bobby McFerrin, Harry Connick, Jr., The Saturday Night Live Band, Chaka Khan, A Tribe Called Quest, and many others. He remains a member of the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra and is the founding Artistic and Education Director of Jazz Houston.
About KU Jazz Ensemble I:
KU Jazz Ensemble I, directed by Dan Gailey, is the flagship ensemble within the Jazz Studies Program at The University of Kansas. The program has received 31 DownBeat Student Music Awards, including Jazz Ensemble I’s 2023, 2021, 2019 and 2015 awards in the Graduate Division for Best College Big Band in the United States or Canada, and their Outstanding Performance Awards in the same division in 2022 and 2017. In April 2022, the band was one of 10 college jazz ensembles invited by Wynton Marsalis to compete in the Rudin Jazz Championship at Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York City, where they were selected as one of 5 finalists for the evening concert. The ensemble also performed at Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York City with internationally acclaimed vocalist Deborah Brown in 2016, and toured Europe with Ms. Brown in 2018, performing 10 shows in 13 days that included appearances at three of the world’s most prestigious jazz festivals — the Montreux Jazz Festival, Umbria Jazz, and the Jazz À Vienne Festival. The band will return to Europe in July 2024, with performances at Umbria Jazz and the San Sebastian (Spain) Jazz Festival, among others.
This event will serve as a kickoff for Essentially Ellington Regional High School Jazz Festival on February 28, where six visiting high school bands and all three KU Jazz Ensembles will play, with awards given at the end of the day.
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Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Lied Center of Kansas - Performing Arts Center, 1600 Stewart Dr,Lawrence,KS,United States
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