The Cedar Rapids Municipal Band returns this week for its 73rd season. The band actually got an early start in 2024 with a featured performance in front of several hundred Iowa school band directors a couple weeks ago in a performance that brought this tough crowd to its feet.
For Week 1, director Steve Shanley brings back his friend and mentor David Lang, a euphonium virtuoso. An Eighties medley and music from the film “Encanto” are also on the bill.
Cedar Rapids Municipal Band performances are free, begin at 7:30 and last about an hour. June 5 at The History Center and June 9 at Beverly Park, with a 6:30 prelude concert by the CR Metro Youth Wind Ensemble. Details at www.crmuniband.org and at www.facebook.com/crmuniband.
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When the 18-time Grammy Award-winning banjoist Bela Fleck speaks of his years-long collaboration with the late pianist Chick Corea, he can sound like a bashful student musician, still obviously in awe of the jazz titan whose impact transformed him as a teenager in the ‘70s. “Remembrance” is a new double album which serves as a moving final document of the profound creative and personal rapport that Fleck and Corea first showcased in 2007. It’s also a crucial addendum to Corea’s legacy, featuring three of his previously unreleased compositions as well as five short free improvisations, recorded live in concert in 2019 and via traded sound files in the midst of the Covid pandemic.
“Cubop Lives!” is the latest release by multi-faceted pianist Zaccai Curtis. As a musician who is so deeply steeped in the jazz and bebop tradition and so vivaciously immersed in the worlds of Afro-Cuban jazz, Curtis found himself wanting to pay homage to the great musicians in whose steps he has trod who brought together the distinct fusion of these musical cultures. The album title holds manifold meaning as it pays tribute to the music that has come before it, Cubop referring to the cultural and musical fusion of Cuban music and bebop.
Jazz Corner of the World with host Craig Kessler
The Wednesday Night Special
Jazz Night in America with host Christian McBride
Hey, Jazz fans! Be sure to tune in this week as we celebrate the birthdays of drummers Al Harewood, Specs Powell, Peter Erskine and Cassius Goens, bandleader Jimmie Lunceford, guitarists Grant Green, Tal Farlow, Royce Campbell and Paul Bollenback, saxophonists Tina Brooks, pianist Monty Alexander and more! We’ll also mark the recording anniversaries of Charlie Parker & Dizzy Gillespie’s “Bird & Diz” (1950), Betty Roche’s “Singin’ and Swingin’” (1960), Buck Clayton’s “A Buck Clayton Jam Session” (1975), Richie Cole’s “Popbop” (1987), Claude Bolling Big Band’s “The Victory Concert: Echoes of 1944-45” (1994), The Charles Earland Tribute Band’s “Keepers of the Flame” (2000) and many others, Mondays thru Fridays at noon on JAZZ MASTERS‘ on Jazz 88.3 KCCK. 