Music Department jazzes up campus this weekend

The Department of Music presents its 10th annual Cornell Jazz Festival on Friday and Saturday, April 27 and 28. This festival of three events, with special guest artists Jimmy Heath, Joe Chambers and Darren Barrett, is directed by Donald Byrd, director of the Cornell University Lab Ensembles (CULE). Tickets are available at the Willard Straight Hall ticket office (255-3430), the ticket center at Clinton House (273-4497) and at the Ithaca College Dillingham Center (274-3224). Tickets also will be available at the door.

Tenor saxophonist and jazz great Jimmy Heath headlines the 10th annual Cornell Jazz Festival. He and other guest artists will lecture Saturday afternoon, and Heath leads the final concert of the festival Saturday at 8 p.m. in Bailey Hall.

The Jazz Festival opens Friday night at 8 p.m., when trumpeter Darren Barrett, winner of the 1997 Thelonious Monk International Jazz Competition, performs in Barnes Hall with one of the CULE big bands. Besides the big band, several CULE small ensembles also will be featured at this concert. To close the event, Barrett will be joined by a dynamic rhythm section, including drummer Joe Chambers, bassist Ira Coleman and pianist Eric Reed, to play a complete set of music. Tickets are $5 for students and $7 general and can be purchased at the door or in advance.

Barrett is widely heralded as the next important trumpeter/composer to come on the scene. He currently is a member of the Jackie McLean Quintet as well as leader of his own quintet. Barrett also has performed and recorded with Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter, Jimmy Heath, Slide Hampton and Antonio Hart. Released in 1999, First One Up is Barrett's debut recording as a group leader. The album was produced by the legendary Donald Byrd, who is Barrett's mentor and one of his primary influences.

Chambers has been described as one of the great drummers to come out of the '60s -- a master of dynamics, percussive color and polyrhythmic density. Also a pianist and composer who can handle mallet instruments, he has performed with most of the modern jazz giants, including Freddie Hubbard, Eric Dolphy, Donald Byrd, Charles Mingus, Wayne Shorter, Chick Corea, Sonny Rollins, Dizzy Gillespie and the Max Roach M'Boom Ensemble. Chambers has recorded close to 300 albums as a sideman and 10 as a leader. More recently, following a handful of fine solo recordings, Chambers scored soundtracks for several Spike Lee films, including Mo' Better Blues. Born and raised near Philadelphia to a musical family, Chambers heard not only the rock 'n' roll of Louis Jordan and Slim Gaillard, but the classical music of Vivaldi, Wagner, Beethoven and Mahler. Drums came early: "I think an instrument picks you. I used to play on pots and pans when I was little. I was setting them up like a kit at four years of age, so the instincts were there."

On Saturday afternoon, all of the guest artists participating in the 2001 Jazz Festival will come together to deliver a lecture at 1 p.m. in the Barnes Hall auditorium. The lecture is expected to last for a couple of hours and will most likely include some playing. It is free and open to the public.

The central event of this year's jazz festival is the final concert scheduled for Saturday at 8 p.m. in Bailey Hall. The headliner artist is tenor saxophonist and jazz great Jimmy Heath. Heath will play a number of tunes with one of the CULE big bands, and later in the concert, he will be joined by trumpeter Barrett and a rhythm section including bassist Coleman, pianist Reed, and drummer Chambers, to close the concert with a complete set of music. Besides the CULE big band, several CULE small ensembles will be featured. Tickets are $8 for students and $10 general.

Heath has long been recognized as a brilliant instrumentalist and a magnificent composer and arranger. He has performed with nearly all the jazz greats of the last 50 years, from Howard McGhee, Dizzy Gillespie and Miles Davis to Wynton Marsalis. In 1948 at the age of 21, he performed in the First International Jazz Festival in Paris with McGhee, sharing the stage with Coleman Hawkins, Slam Stewart and Erroll Garner. One of Heath's earliest big bands (1947-1948) in Philadelphia included John Coltrane, Benny Golson, Specs Wright, Cal Massey, Johnny Coles, Ray Bryant and Nelson Boyd.

During his career, Heath has performed on more than 100 record albums, including seven with The Heath Brothers and 12 as a leader. He also has written more than 100 compositions, many of which have become jazz standards and have been recorded by such artists as Art Farmer, Cannonball Adderley, Clark Terry, Chet Baker, Miles Davis, James Moody, Milt Jackson, Ahmad Jamal, Ray Charles, Dizzy Gillespie J.J. Johnson and Dexter Gordon. Heath also has composed extended works -- seven suites and two string quartets -- and he premiered his first symphonic work, "Three Ears," in 1988 at Queens College (CUNY) with Maurice Peress conducting.

After having just concluded 11 years as professor of music at the Aaron Copland School of Music at Queens College, Heath maintains an extensive performance schedule and continues to conduct workshops and clinics throughout the United States, Europe and Canada. He also has taught jazz studies at Jazzmobile, Housatonic College, City College of New York and The New School for Social Research.

The guest artists' jazz festival appearances are supported in part by grants from the Cornell Council for the Arts, the Student Assembly Finance Commission and the International Students Programming Board.