Monday, November 7, 2011

All that jazz - 754 pieces to be exact

Advance File Photo
The organization’s founding director (and French horn player) Georgiana DiMauro has spent the past few years dismantling and dispersing its library — a collection of about a thousand valuable, annotated items of sheet music. 

Selected categories of music have been deposited with local groups. The Staten Island Philharmonic, Viva Voce Chamber Ensemble and Musical Chairs Chamber Ensemble were all given music. The acquisition represents a considerable savings for recipients and a kind of afterlife for SICMP. 

Performance recordings and the group’s papers were given to the Staten Island Museum Archives. The biggest deposit of all, at the Library of the College of Staten Island, will be celebrated Thursday with a concert and reception led by Michael Morreale, a professor of music and a founding member of the Players’ Jazz Quartet. 

The music will be kept in the college library on the campus in Willowbrook. It consists of 754 pieces, mostly classical, a gift in excess of $15,000. The gift has been presented in honor of the college’s first president, the late Edmund Volpe, and his wife Rose. 

In addition to the gift, the concert will mark the establishment of a new concentration in jazz studies and performance. It will allow undergraduates to earn a bachelor of science degree in music, with a 15-credit concentration in jazz theory, composition, history and performance. 

Morreale, whose affiliation with SICMP started in 1983, wrote five compositions for jazz quartet while there. He also led concerts with such guest artists as Don Joseph, Turk Van Lake, Chuck Wayne, and Peter Prisco. 

The student performers will be Alan Aurelia, trumpet Rafael Calderon, Casey Heuler, David Immiti, Joseph Lamanna Ann Marie Nacchio and Isidore Ramkissoon. 

The public is welcome to attend the admission-free concert Thursday at 1:30 p.m. in the Recital Hall, Center for the Arts, 2800 Victory Blvd., Willowbrook.

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