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Tuesday, March 19
The Indiana Daily Student

arts

Jazz Fables Concert Series to play tonight

Jamey Aebersold All-Star Quartet will be performing at Bear's place this Thursday.

The Jazz Fables Concert Series presents the return of Jamey Aebersold, a distinguished Indiana University jazz alumni saxophone player, bandleader, composer and 2014 National Endowment of the Arts educator.

He will be perform from 5:30 to 8 p.m. tonight at Bear’s Place Ale House and Eatery. The event is only open to those 21-years-old and over. Tickets are $5 for students and $7 for all other attendees.

Alongside Aebersold is his All-Star Jazz Quartet, featuring members such as IU music professor Luke Gillespie and Louisville’s first-call rhythm section mates bassist Tyrone Wheeler and drummer Jonathan Higgins.

The group will play Aebersold’s original jazz compositions and arrangements of classical jazz pieces by Duke Ellington, Charlie Parker, Sonny Rollins, Hank Mobley, Cedar Walton and others.

They will also perform instrumental jazz versions of American songbook ?standards.

David Miller founded the Jazz Fables Quintet in 1977 and the Jazz Fables Concert Series in 1989.

He played trumpet with jazz professors Tom Walsh and Luke Gillespie from the Jacobs School of Music. He said the young musicians were still students when they started with Fables.

“From the beginning, and except for me, the group consisted mostly of IU jazz studies student performers, with occasional special guest performers,” Miller said. “Many former Jazz Fables members have gone on to become major league jazz or professional music artists.”

Thomas Walsh, professor of saxophone in the music school, said the group has been playing at Bear’s Place for more than 25 years and that there is a great sense of community among those who attend the concerts each week.

“I have had the good fortune to play a lot of different music with a lot of great musicians in the Jazz Fables series at Bear’s Place over the last 25 years, so when I play there, I have a lot of memories of all the great music that has been played in that room,” Walsh said.

He said he hopes audience members will gain an appreciation and understanding of jazz music with the concert series. He said he is looking forward to playing with his bandmates and hopes they enjoy themselves.

“I hope all attendees of all the Jazz Fables Series concerts get a chance to enjoy all Jazz Fables Series artists’ musical performances just as they hear them in the moment,” Miller said. “It is also important that each listener gets an opportunity to develop their personal musical appreciation and understanding of history of the jazz idiom and of jazz as an improvisational art form of the highest order.”

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