Lounge Piano at the Museum, Jazz Here and Nearby, Birmingham and Atlanta Classial

Lunch at the Museum, Jazz Munchies at Piccolo, Auburn Summer Jazz Concert

This Thursday will be the last free lunchtime concert for the spring series at the museum. Mary Slaton, a skilled pianist in the lounge-piano style, will perform. I'm in her trio (http://www.maryslaton.com), and it's fun. I've never really had to learn all those tunes that everyone else knows. Musicians famously hate to play them because people love them so much and keep asking for them, so we have to play them a lot. But people always ask for them because they're actually great songs. I'm talking about tunes like "Misty;" "New York, New York;" "Feelings;" "I Just Called to Say I Love You;" "The Rose;" "Crazy." I could go on about how I think that all art musicians owe their livelihoods to music like this and should perhaps re-frame the way we think about playing them, but I'll save that for another post. Anyway, Mary will be playing some Mozart, too, so there you go. Plus, she's got a cool little bossa arrangement of James Taylor's "You've Got a Friend."

Thursday night, we'll see jazz vocalist Jane Drake return to Piccolo (click the link to find the bar's appetizer menu) with bassist Sidney Simmons and pianist Jonathan Lynn. Saxophonist La'Roy Bodiford will headline on Friday with Coleman Woodson, III, on piano and Tim Chambliss on drums. I don't know about Saturday, yet, but will post it when I learn. All three nights are 8-11. Here's a previous post where I embedded a YouTube video of Bodiford playing with the Troy University Jazz Band.

UPDATE: Saturday night at Piccolo is Kenyon Carter. I embedded a video of his in a previous post.

On Monday (5/23) will be an Auburn Summer Jazz Concert at AU's Goodwin Hall. I hope to know more soon. Here's the event page.

Columbus Jazz Benefit, ASO and ASO events, Atlanta Chamber Players

On Sunday (5/22), the Alex Pershounin Jazz Quintet will perform in Columbus, Georgia, at the Liberty Theatre. The event, called Jazz at the Liberty, is a benefit for the theatre and the Columbus Jazz Society. Pershounin, head of the jazz program at Columbus State, will be joined by Amy Griffiths on sax, Tyrone Jackson on piano, Trey Wright on guitar and John David on drums. Tickets are $20. There will be a pre-concert jazz talk by Pershounin and a silent auction. The program starts at 3:00 PM. Click here for the Society's home page with more info.

The Atlanta Chamber Players will perform their grand finale, Chamber Music at the Tavern, next Tuesday night (5/24) at the New American Shakespeare Tavern in Atlanta. They'll perform pieces by Franz Schreker, Ned Rorem and Brams. I've not been to the Tavern, but it boasts Original Practice Shakespeare productions and advertises a "British pub menu and libations." Sounds awesome. Here's the event page.

This coming Thursday (5/19), Saturday (5/21) and Sunday (5/22), The Atlanta Symphony Orchestra will do Mendelssohn's Suite from a Midsummer Night's Dream, Britten's Spring Symphony and Rachmaninov's Spring Cantata. This is a choral concert with featured grammy-award-winning soloists and others with impressive résumés. The event page lists Stephen Powell, Jessica Rivera, Kelley O'Connor and Anthony Dean Griffey as featured soloists. The Atlanta Symphony Chorus will join in and the Gwinnett Young Singers as well. Sounds big. They'll also play a world premiere of a new fanfare by Robert Pound. Well, they'll world premier it on Thursday. On Saturday and Sunday, they'll just play it.

The Alabama Symphony Orchestra continues its Beethoven Festival. I listed a schedule summary in another post.

There may be more going on, but the baby woke up and is yelling at me. If there's time, I'll post more later.

Music...of the fuuuuturrrrrre

May 27 - Montgomery Symphony presents Free Jubilee Pops Concert (Montgomery)
May 27-8 - Patti LuPone sings with the Atlanta Symphony (Atlanta)
May 27 - Alabama Symphony presents Dvorak and Mozart (Birmingham)
May 29 - CSU students present Opera and Musical Theater Sampler (Columbus)
May 29 - Wynnsong 12 simulcast: The Bolshoi Ballet presents Coppelia (Auburn)
June 1 - Herbie Hancock at Alys Stephens Center (Birmingham)
June 2 - Alabama Symphony presents Mozart, Dvorak, and Tchaikovsky (Birmingham)
June 6 - I'm playing jazz at Hamilton's on Magnolia with guitarist Patrick Bruce (Auburn)