Ouachita Stories

The Jazz Band at Ouachita Baptist University will perform Tuesday, Nov. 8, at 7:30 p.m. in Jones Performing Arts Center on Ouachita’s campus. The concert will be free and open to the public.

“Jazz is America's music. It was created here and has had an impact on both classical and popular music styles,” said Dr. Craig Hamilton, Ouachita’s Lena Goodwin Trimble Professor of Music and director of bands. “The Jazz Band at Ouachita is a lab for students to learn different styles of jazz and popular music as well as experiment with improvisation.”

Twenty Ouachita students make up the Ouachita Jazz Band with instruments ranging from saxophones to trumpets to trombones and a rhythm section, in addition to a student vocalist who will join the band for certain selections. This semester’s featured vocalist is Esther Atkinson,a junio musical theatre major from Rogers, Ark.

The concert will feature Kris Berg’s “R U Chicken?”, “Come Out Swingin’” by Larry Neeck, “San Lup” by Jeff Jarvis, “After You’ve Gone” by Turner Layton and arranged by Rich Sigler and “Sky Dive” by Freddie Hubbard and arranged by Erik Morales. The Jazz Band also will perform Greg Yasinitsky’s arrangement of “(Back Home Again in) Indiana” by James Hanley, Kris Berg’s arrangement of “Samba de Orphee” by Luiz Bonfa, Alan Baylock’s “El Abrazo,” Mark Taylor’s arrangement of “Sway” by Pablo Beltran Ruiz, Mike Tomaro’s arrangement of “Sway” by Sting, Roger Holmes’ arrangement of “Smooth” by Rob Thomas and Itaal Shur, Alan Baylock’s arrangement of “Things Ain’t What They Used to Be” by Mercer Ellington and Cole Porter’s “It’s All Right with Me.”

“The concert is more laid back and relaxed,” Hamilton noted. “I think the audience will enjoy the music and the atmosphere.”

For more information about Ouachita’s instrumental programs, visit www.obu.edu/band.

 

By Haley Martin // Photo by Kelsey Bond

October 14, 2016