Celebrate two centennials for the price of one tonight, Friday, July 14, 2017, at the Morristown & Township Library.
Jazz in July, back for its 13th season, marks the 100th anniversary of the library and jazz with a 7 pm concert featuring Joe Licari on clarinet, Randy Reinhart on cornet, Tom Artin on trombone, John Halsey on piano, Brian Nalepka on bass, and David Humm on drums.
It’s the first of two shows this month.
From the library:
For the first concert in the series, Dixieland and swing jazz reign supreme. Dixieland or ‘hot jazz’ originated in the Delta, but spread like wild fire up the Mississippi River to Chicago and eastward to New York City. In fact, many early jazz standards became so famous that many patrons of other types of music are well aware of the tunes.
Featuring a jazz sextet, various songs from New Orleans and the Mississippi River valley as well as tunes made famous by the likes of Louis Armstrong and even the New York songwriters who followed, will be featured for an evening of wonderful music
The $20 admission benefits the library, at One Miller Road, Morristown. Refreshments will be served.
A second jazz concert is set for July 21. Again, from the library:
Guitarist Bob Devos, Bob McHugh on piano, Ron Naspo on bass and David Humm on drums, will highlight some of the jazz greats born in 1917, such as Thelonious Monk and Dizzy Gillespie, as well as Duke Ellington, another legendary figure in the music genre.
Thelonious Monk was born on Oct. 10, 1917, and developed an improvisational style that led to many of his compositions to be recorded by other jazz artists.
Dizzy Gillespie, born eleven days after Monk, was a virtuoso trumpeter known for his unique, bent instrument, his puffed cheeks and a style that went uncopied for decades due to its complexity.
Duke Ellington was almost a generation older than Monk and Gillespie and wrote an astounding number of compositions from his ambitious “Black, Brown and Beige” in 1943 to “Mood Indigo,” “Don’t Get Around Much Anymore” and “It Don’t Mean a Thing (If It Ain’t Got That Swing).”
