Piccolo, CSU Jazz and Montgomery Symphony Events in the Next Few Days

(Part 2 of events coming up in the next few days. Here is Part 1.)

Piccolo Jazz Details and CSU Jazz Coming Up

I've just learned that joining Taylor Kennedy at Piccolo tonight (see last post linked above) will be one of Auburn's very best drummers, Tim Chambliss, with the previously mentioned pianist Jonathan Lynn and bassist Sidney Simmons who play with Jane Drake (and plenty of other places). I think I will stop editing this paragraph, now.

There will be jazz tonight (4/29) at The Loft in Columbus, though its online calendar is not letting on. The (a?) Columbus State University Jazz Combo (students) will play. A goal of mine is to get more familiar with the faculty and students over there. As I've mentioned before, CSU music is really blooming.

More CSU music, jazz and otherwise, will be at The Loft next Wednesday night (5/4), starting at 7:00 Eastern time and going pretty late. Here's the Facebook event page. It will start with student jazz groups and finish up with the school's Popular Music Ensemble. The academic pop/rock thing is a relatively recent trend. Here's a YouTube video of this group playing last fall.

Montgomery Symphony Orchestra

On Monday (5/2), the Montgomery Symphony Orchestra performs its final classical concert of the season. The winner of its 2011 Blount-Slawson Young Artists Competition, Kelly Talim, will perform Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto. They'll also do Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition. They must have heard that I have a gig that night, 6:30 - 9:00, at Hamilton's on Magnolia with Columbus guitarist Elwood Madeo, or else I'm sure they would have called me to play the sax part in Pictures. 

So, the Blount-Slawson competition is a big deal. It's a serious national competition for 7th-12th graders in the US. Talim is 15, or was when she won it earlier this year. The winner performs on From the Top, a nationally broadcast public radio and TV program. Here's an article from From the Top's blog, The Green Room, about the contest. 

Another biggie next week with MSO is on Tuesday night (5/3), the five finalists for its 2-year violin fellowship will perform at 7:00. The MSO's fellowships are awarded to players who have completed their education and are beginning their music careers. This should be a very, very good concert. Then on May 15, the outgoing violin fellow, Liana Gourdjia will perform her final recital. She and MSO's current cello fellow, Laura Usiskin, have both performed beautifully at Auburn's Jule Collins Smith Museum for its lunch music series. 

Here's MSO's website.
Here's Gourdjia's website.