Jazz at Centrum

The Banda Brothers Latin Jazz Band

[The Banda Brothers Latin Jazz Band in studio]

The Banda Brothers will bring their hot, danceable Latin jazz stylings to McCurdy Pavilion on Friday, July 27, at 7:30 pm. Whether you want to bring your dancing shoes or just listen and be part of the show, tickets are available here or by calling Centrum at 360.385.3102, x117.

Summer Tickets Now On Sale

We're pleased to announce that tickets are now on sale for Centrum's summer performances at Fort Worden State Park in Port Townsend. Highlights of the 2007 summer season include:

• Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Paul Moravec and Trio Solisti anchor the Port Townsend Chamber Music Festival, led by new Artistic Director Helen Callus.
• Centrum's June 10 special sneak preview of the Seattle Men’s Chorus’ new show “Scared Faithless,” a look at religion through the lens of experiences by gay men and women.
• South African teaspoon slide guitar player Hannes Coetzee and Grammy winning vocalist Laurie Lewis performing at the combined Voiceworks/Port Townsend Slide & Steel Festival.
• National Heritage Award fellows Liz Carroll and Paul Dahlin, along with the Carolina Chocolate Drops and dozens more, turning up the temperature during the Festival of American Fiddle Tunes.
• Writers Eileen Myles, Arthur Sze, Thomas Glave Camille Dungy and others whom Artistic Director Rebecca Brown says “work beyond the bounds of well-behaved American literature” at the Port Townsend Writers’ Conference.
• Roberta Gambarini, the Banda Brothers Latin All-Stars and NEA Jazz Master Gerald Wilson joining Artistic Director John Clayton and others at Jazz Port Townsend, Washington’s longest-running summer jazz festival.
• The Port Townsend Country Blues Festival, the nation’s largest gathering of acoustic blues musicians, welcomes National Heritage Award winners Eddie Pennington, Henry Gray and John Cephas, as well as Robert Belfour and many more.

Information on ordering tickets is available on our Information Center site.

I Want You To Have a Good Time: Tenor Sax Legend Houston Person

Don’t fit tenor saxophonist and record producer Houston Person into a particular jazz category. You can’t. And he doesn’t want you to try.

“The music industry uses stuff like categories,” Person says. “But they’re on the other side of the thing. They’re not in it. They don’t understand how music works.”

Top Jazz Prizes Go To Centrum Alumni

Six of the top ten outstanding soloist acknowledgments at the Essentially Ellington national high school jazz competition in New York City this past weekend are Jazz Port Townsend alumni. Alto saxophonists John Cheadle (Garfield High School) and Logan Strosahl (Roosevelt High School), tenor saxophonist Joel Gombiner (Garfield), pianists Benjamin Hamaji (Garfield) and Scotty Bemis (Roosevelt), and banjo player Reed Ferris (Roosevelt), all won outstanding soloist awards. Congratulations to all our Centrum alumni! (Read Seattle Times jazz critic Paul de Barros's complete article on the Essentially Ellington competition here.) 

NEA Jazz Master Gerald Wilson

Legendary NEA Jazz Master Gerald Wilson, often considered one of the top composers, arrangers, and band leaders in the history of jazz, will be bringing a lifetime's worth of work in jazz to Jazz Port Townsend this summer.

Wilson has been behind some of the biggest names in jazz, including Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Ray Charles, and Ella Fitzgerald. In the 1960s he almost single-handedly integrated the Los Angeles Musicians' Union, and he played at Martin Luther King, Jr.'s civil rights rallies in Los Angeles.

Throughout his career, Wilson has received considerable acclaim, winning countless awards, having his life's work archived by the Library of Congress, and garnering multiple Grammy nominations.

Bron in Shelby, Mississippi, in 1918, Wilson got his started in Jimmie Lunceford's orchestra as a trumpet player. He played with the Count Basie Orchestra and in 1950 joined the Dizzy Gillespie big band, as a trumpet player and arranger. He became particularly famous in the jazz world through a number of classic big band recordings in the 1960s. 

Wilson will be leading this year's Festival All-Star Big Band, in the mainstage performance at McCurdy Pavilion on Saturday, July 28, following sets by Joe Locke (with Bruce Forman, Chuck Deardorf, and Jon Wikan), and Roberta Gambarini (with Tamir Hendelman, John Clayton, and Joe LaBarbera).