Feb. 7, 2024

Jazz ensembles to perform spring concert, host annual festival with KC-based combo

The sounds of jazz music will fill the Northwest Missouri State University campus next week at a concert featuring University jazz ensembles and the Department of Fine and Performing Arts’ annual Northwest Jazz Festival, which will feature a Kansas City jazz combo.

All of the performances are free and open to the public.

The week opens with Northwest’s Studio Jazz Ensemble and Jazz Ensemble performing a concert at 7 p.m. Monday, Feb. 12, in the Charles Johnson Theater at the Olive DeLuce Fine Arts Building.

The Northwest Jazz Ensemble, pictured during a concert last fall, will perform Feb. 12 and Feb. 16 in the Charles Johnson Theater. (Photo by Chandu Ravi Krishna/Northwest Missouri State University)

Conducted by Dr. William Richardson, a Northwest professor of music, the program will feature jazz standards, including “My Funny Valentine,” “Salt Peanuts” and “Bossa Montreaux” as well as a 2005 piece written for the Northwest Jazz Ensemble, “Puro Gallo,” by composer Craig Biondi. In addition, the Northwest Jazz Combo will perform pre-concert music.

Then, Northwest hosts its annual Jazz Festival on Friday, Feb. 16, with 25 middle school and high school ensembles from Iowa, Nebraska and Missouri set to perform on the campus. Festival performances begin at 8:50 a.m. and continue throughout the day in the Charles Johnson Theater as well as the Mary Linn Auditorium at the Ron Houston Center for the Performing Arts.

In addition to a performance by the Northwest Jazz Ensemble at noon, Riff Generation, a combo affiliated with the Kansas City Jazz Orchestra, will headline the festival with a performance at 5 p.m. Both ensembles will perform in the Charles Johnson Theater.

A schedule of middle school and high school ensembles and jazz combos performing at the Northwest Jazz Festival is provided below. Funding support for the Northwest Jazz Festival is provided by the University’s College of Arts and Sciences and the Missouri Arts Council.