Current Concert Season

The Yale Jazz Ensemble Big Band, Wayne Escoffery, Music Director, will celebrate Slide Hampton and George Coleman at its season opener on Wednesday, November 9, 2022, at 7:30 p.m. in Morse Recital Hall in Sprague Memorial Hall.
Admission is free and no tickets are required.
The concert will feature the pioneering music of jazz trombonist/composer/arranger Slide Hampton’s octet (of which saxophonist George Coleman was a member), with new big-band orchestrations of “A Moment’s Notice” and “Star Eyes” by Michael Philip Mossman, arranged specifically for the Yale Jazz Ensemble Big Band. Also featuring Hampton’s early works, including his expressive arrangement of “Motherless Child,” and his originals “Frame for the Blues,” “Go East, Young Man,” and “Althea,” originally written for The Maynard Ferguson Orchestra.

Thomas C. Duffy, Music Director.
• “Come Sunday” by Omar Thomas is a two-movement tribute to the Hammond organ’s central role in black worship services. The title is a direct nod to Duke Ellington, who held an inspired love for classical music and allowed it to influence his own work in a multitude of ways.
• “Serenade No. 10 (Gran Partita) K. 361” (Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart) - Overture, Adagio (featured in the movie “Amadeus”), and Rondo
TRAINS! - Featuring New Haven Railroad Engine No. 349’s 1926 brass bell!
• “Little Train of the Brazilian Countryman” (Heitor Villa-Lobos)
• “Ghost Train I” (Eric Whitacre)
• “The Midnight Fire Alarm” (Harry Lincoln)
Guest Conductor: Ricky Fleming
Director of Bands, State University of New York - Buffalo State
• “Splinter” (Holly Harrison)
• “The Alcotts” (Charles Ives/trans. Richard Thurston)

Yale Concert Band, Thomas C. Duffy, Music Director.
• “Afro-Cuban Suite” (world premiere, commissioned by the Yale Concert Band). New Haven-based composer, bassist, and educator Jeff Fuller is widely known as a jazz bassist who specializes in Latin music. This suite ranges stylistically from bembé to bolero, from rumba to mambo. Fuller describes it as “my sincere homage to the music, musicians, and culture of Cuba,” further stating, “Cuban music has forged a deep river of inspiration which has carried me through decades of my professional life. To me, Cuban music and American jazz are two branches of the same tree.”
• “AMEN!” A reflection of composer Carlos Simon’s experience growing up in the African American Pentecostal Church, known for its exuberant outward expressions of worship–dancing, spontaneous shouting, and soulful singing.
• “Shades of Red” (Ryan J. Williams). Concerto for mellophone. Kate Warren, Yale School of Music ’23, mellophone
• “Serenade in Eb major, Op. 7” (Richard Strauss). Strauss’s lyrical and soaring serenade for chamber winds.
• “Bright Shadow Fanfare” (Nicole Piunno), Kelly Watkins, Director, Eastern Connecticut State University Concert Band:
• “On This Bright Morning” (David Maslanka), Kelly Watkins, Director, Eastern Connecticut State University Concert Band:
• “Rocketship!” (Kevin Day), Catherine Zhang Yale ’24, guest conductor

Wayne Escoffery, Music Director. Featuring “O.P.” and “Eclipse” by Charles Mingus – excerpts from his 19-movement magnum opus, “Epitaph,” which was painstakingly pieced together after his death in 1979 by Mingus musicologist Andrew Homzy and first performed in full under the baton of Gunther Schuller in 1989; “Patricia” (Slide Hampton),” “Amsterdam After Dark” and “Revival” (George Coleman).

Thomas C. Duffy, Music Director. Brian Coffill (Director of Instrumental Ensembles, Randolph-Macon College), guest conductor: “Shut Out” by Tyler Mazone. Other rep: “The Seer” (Erik Santos), Albert Lee, tenor; “Riffs” (Jeff Tyzik), Makana Medeiros YSM ’23, drum set; “Peace Dancer” (Jodie Blackshaw); “La Oreja de Oro” (Mariano San Miguel); “Serenade for Wind Nonet” (Katahj Copley); “Postcard” (Frank Ticheli).