Jack Kleinsinger’s Highlights In Jazz

Jack Kleinsinger’s Highlights In Jazz, New York’s longest running jazz concert series, continues its 44th season on Thursday May 12th with the presentation Highlights In Jazz Audience Favorites, bringing together seven of the series most popular artists, including previous Highlights In Jazz Annual Award Winners guitarist Bucky Pizzarelli and trombonist Wycliffe Gordon. The pair will be joined by vocalist Alexis Cole, trumpeter/vocalist Bria Skonberg, guitarist Frank Vignola, bassist/vocalist Nicki Parrott and drummer Alvin Atkinson plus, as in all Highlights In Jazz concerts, a surprise special guest. The show will take place on Thursday, May 12, 2016 at 8 pm at Tribeca Performing Arts Center of Borough of Manhattan Community College, 199 Chambers Street, NY, NY  10007.

The third concert of the 2016 season, Highlights In Jazz Audience Favorites, brings together an all star cast of versatile artists who have graced previous Highlights In Jazz concerts with performances that have earned them great popular acclaim from the dedicated audience members who have continued to make the series the long running success it has become. At the top of the bill are two of Kleinsinger’s personal favorites, former Benny Goodman guitarist Bucky Pizzarelli and Wynton Marsalis-Jazz at Lincoln Center alumnus, trombonist Wycliffe Gordon, the respective 2000 and 2015 recipients of the Annual Highlights In Jazz Award, which has been presented every year since the series’ inception to honor a singular living jazz musician for their “matchless musical achievements.” The veteran Pizzarelli will be making his 35th Highlights In Jazz appearance, since performing on the series inaugural concert back in 1973. Trombonist/vocalist Gordon, last year’s Highlights In Jazz Award recipient, the youngest of the series’ legion of honorees, will be making his 21st Highlights In Jazz appearance, having performed with a veritable Who’s Who of artists since his first series’ performance back in 2004.

Joining the pair will be five no less talented artists who have earned the approval of Highlights In Jazz listeners in earlier appearances. Vocalist Alexis Cole, lauded by All Music Guide for her “sophisticated, urbane style and warm, resonant voice, well suited to traditional standards and swing” will actually be making her first “official” Highlights In Jazz appearance. Kleinsinger proclaims, “She was a surprise guest last year the people were just crazy about her, so I wanted to bring her back.”  Sharing the bill, trumpeter Bria Skonberg and bassist Nicki Parrott, are talented vocalists as well as accomplished instrumentalists, and drummer Alvin Atkinson has been known to scat swingingly in tandem with his virtuoso drumming, so the show is bound to have some exceptional vocal teamwork, as well as some two guitar encounters with Pizzarelli and Frank Vignola.

With such a versatile cast of artists on hand Kleinsinger will be putting his many years of experience producing concerts to good use, mixing and matching up different combinations to feature each performer. The veteran presenter asserts, “We’re going to have fun with this one. Anything can happen!” And of course, as in all Highlights In Jazz concerts, these great artists will be joined by a surprise special guest. Some of the biggest stars in jazz who have appeared as special guests in previous years have been Eubie Blake, Cab Calloway, Dizzy Gillespie, Earl Hines, Branford Marsalis, Carmen McRae, Gerry Mulligan, George Shearing and many others. 

Highlights In Jazz 44th season will conclude on Thursday June 16th with Trio Time, featuring the classic jazz of the Dick Hyman Trio with bassist Jay Leonhart and guitarist Howard Alden and the Brazilian sounds of Trio da Paz, with guitarist Romero Lubambo, bassist Nilson Matta and drummer Duduka Da Fonseca.

All Shows At

BMCC TRIBECA Performing Arts Center 
Borough of Manhattan Community College 
199 Chambers Street, New York, NY 10007
http://tribecapac.org