MOUNT VERNON – The Knox Community Jazz Orchestra and the Woodward Opera House will salute summer in sizzling, swinging style with a concert on Saturday, Aug. 19.
The concert, with the theme “Celebrating Summer,” begins at 7:30 p.m. at the Woodward, at 107 South Main Street, Mount Vernon. Tickets cost $15 and are available at the door or through the Woodward’s website, www.thewoodward.org.
Doors open at 6:30 p.m. Light refreshments will be available free of charge. A cash bar will be available as well.
The 20-member jazz orchestra, which has won an enthusiastic following since it started six years ago, has chosen tunes that evoke the blue skies, warm breezes, starry nights, and spicy heat of the summertime. The group’s big-band rhythms invite dancing, and a dance floor will be open, front and center, for any who wish to swing or samba.
“For the summer theme, we’ve chosen some wonderful new material, and we’ll also draw on audience favorites that have been in our repertoire for a while,” said band leader and trumpeter Ted Buehrer, who teaches music at Kenyon College.
“One of the new pieces, for instance, is ‘Summertime Down South,’ by Bill Armstrong, which brings an upbeat Latin groove to George Gershwin’s classic song ‘Summertime.’ We also found a great Quincy Jones arrangement of the well-known tune ‘One Mint Julep,’ from Jones’s time with the Count Basie Orchestra.
“And we’re returning to a favorite ballad, ‘So Many Stars,’ by Sergio Mendes, in an arrangement that features tenor sax.”
Other favorites slated for the performance include “Blue Skies,” “Take the A Train,” “Moonlight Serenade,” and “In the Mood.”
Buehrer founded the Knox Community Jazz Orchestra in 2017, reviving a local jazz-band tradition that dates back to the Riley Norris Orchestra of the 1960s, the Bob Bechtel Big Band of the 1980s, and the Colonial City Big Band that followed it.
The orchestra performed in the Woodward last November and hopes to make the historic opera house a regular venue.
The group has also appeared at Ariel Foundation Park, the Mount Vernon Music & Arts Festival, Kenyon College, the annual Tops ’n’ Pops concert of the Mount Vernon City Schools, and the invitational jazz festival of the Centerburg School District.
For more information about the Aug. 19 concert, contact Dena Hess-McKinstry at 740-263-6737, or email Ted Buehrer at info@knoxcommunityjazz.org.
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