Next Jazz Orchestra, Jazz Singers performance includes Guest Artist Rezek
calendar icon27 Feb 2020
The Glenn Korff School of Music continues the 2019-2020 jazz season with the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s Jazz Orchestra and UNL’s Jazz Singers featuring guest artist Dave Rezek on March 12 at 7:30 p.m. in Kimball Recital Hall. Jazz Singers will perform music by Darmon Meader and Rosana Eckert, two prolific contemporary vocal jazz arrangers. The Jazz Orchestra will feature Dave Rezek on a variety of classic and contemporary big band literature, including charts by Javier Arau, Bob Brookmeyer, and Thad Jones. Tickets are Adults $5; Students/Seniors $3 at the door the night of the performance.
The Jazz Orchestra is the university’s showcase jazz organization and one of the Glenn Korff School of Music’s most visible performing groups. Membership in the Jazz Orchestra is determined by audition each semester, and music majors, as well as non-majors, are encouraged to try out. This versatile ensemble performs all styles of music from Duke Ellington to the contemporary artists of today. In addition to numerous performances in the Lincoln/Omaha area, the Nebraska Jazz Orchestra has been heard on NPR’s Jazz Set with Branford Marsalis.
The UNL Jazz Singers is a small choir, open to all members of the University community by audition. Students are instructed in the jazz style, ensemble singing, lyric delivery, solos, and improvisation. The ensemble performs arrangements of standard and contemporary jazz repertoire in collaboration with a rhythm section. Jazz Singers participates in various performances both on and off-campus each semester, including appearances at regional jazz festivals.
A Des Moines native, versatile trumpeter Dave Rezek has been a much sought-after private teacher, clinician, festival adjudicator, front/sideman, and guest artist with colleges and high schools. He has been busy with many creative projects, including his own original-music septet Dave Rezek’s Alpha State Agents, the Des Moines Big Band, the Max Wellman Big Band & Quintet, ‘Ceptet, the Bryan Schumacker Quintet, the Tony Valdez Large Band, and Mike Conrad’s Colossus Central Big Band. He has also collaborated and performed with numerous other top area artists including John Kizilarmut, Karl McComas-Reichl, Chris Merz, Jason Danielson, Damani Phillips, Mitch Towne, Bob Washut, Sam Salomone, Susie Miget, Jim Oatts, Chris Steinke, Scott Barnum, and Orquesta Alto Maiz, and he has performed in show orchestras at both the Civic Center and Des Moines Playhouse.
Dave is faculty at Susie Miget’s Creative Music Studio, Iowa’s only year-round private jazz studies school, where he teaches trumpet techniques, jazz improvisation and private trumpet instruction, and he had previously worked as a Teaching Artist at Drake University as the Combo Coordinator and coach of Jazz Combo I. He also founded the popular Jazz Happy Hour series at the Des Moines Social Club. In 2015, Dave was the recipient of a Community Jazz Center Special Recognition Award for his contributions to the jazz tradition in Central Iowa.
Dave received his Bachelor of Music Education degree with a Jazz Studies emphasis at the University of Northern Iowa, where he studied with Randy Grabowski, and his Master of Music degree in Jazz Trumpet Performance at New England Conservatory, where he was a member of the Honors Jazz Quintet, was a teaching assistant, and studied with John McNeil, Danilo Perez, and Bob Brookmeyer. In Boston, he performed throughout New England and while at NEC performed with Danilo Perez, Bob Brookmeyer, Maria Schneider, George Russell and Gunther Schuller. In both Boston and NYC, he worked with many of Brookmeyer’s top former student composers who had formed their own innovative large ensembles, including Darcy James Argue, JC Sanford, David Schumacher, Ayn Inserto, Hans Indigo, Javier Arau, and Christian Pincock. While in New York, he was performing as an original member of multi-Grammy nominated Darcy James Argue’s Secret Society, and he was a frequent sub on Broadway shows. Dave was a designated sub with Jersey Boys, with which he appeared onstage at the 2006 Tony Awards, when the show took home the Best Musical award.