Jazz Ensemble and Chamber Singers give concerts this weekend in Barnes

Wycliffe Gordon Courtesy of the Music Department

On Saturday, Nov. 22, at 8 p.m. in Barnes Hall, the Cornell University Jazz Ensemble I, under the direction of Paul Merrill, presents a concert of big band music featuring guest trombonist Wycliffe Gordon, recipient of the 2001 and 2002 Trombonist of the Year awards from the Jazz Journalists Association.

The first half of the program includes tunes by Jerry Coker and John Wilson, as well as I Let a Song Go Out of My Heart, penned by Duke Ellington, Irving Mills, Henry Nemo and John Redmond. Opening with an arrangement of Lester Young's Tickle Toe, the second half also features Dizzy Gillespie's Con Alma, Catch Phrase by Ithaca College School of Music faculty member Steve Brown, an arrangement of Johnny Green's Body and Soul and Ellington's Cottontail.

Gordon enjoys an extraordinary career as a performer, conductor, composer, arranger and educator, receiving high praise from audiences and critics alike. He tours the world performing hard-swinging jazz for audiences ranging from heads of state to elementary school students, and his trombone playing, a mixture of powerful and intricate runs with sweet notes extended over clean melodies, has been universally hailed by jazz critics. In addition to a thriving solo career, he tours regularly leading the Wycliffe Gordon Quartet, headlining at legendary jazz venues throughout the country.

A former veteran member of the Wynton Marsalis Septet, the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra and the Gully Low Jazz Band, Gordon also has performed extensively with many jazz greats and has been a featured guest artist on Billy Taylor's Jazz at the Kennedy Center series. A committed music educator, he serves on the faculty of the newly established Jazz Studies Program at the Juilliard School, as well as artist-in-residence at the School of Music at Michigan State University.

Born May 29, 1967, in Waynesboro, Ga., Gordon was introduced to music by his late father, Lucius Gordon, a classical pianist and teacher. His interest in the trombone was sparked at age 12 by his elder brother, who played the instrument in his junior high school band. Egged on by sibling rivalry, Gordon relentlessly pleaded with his parents to buy him his first trombone. A year later, an aunt bequeathed Gordon her jazz record collection and so began his passion for jazz music.

Cornell Chamber Singers

Four hundred years ago, Madrid's church of St. Peter and Paul resounded to Victoria's Requiem, a work dubbed by the late renowned musicologist Paul Henry Lang as "the crowning glory of [Victoria's] art and one of the most magnificent choral compositions of the entire literature." Composed for the funeral obsequies of the Dowager Empress Maria in 1603, the work was the last of Victoria's compositions.

Noone, a graduate of King's College, Cambridge, has dedicated a lifetime to the study of Spanish Renaissance music. As scholar and musicologist, he is known especially for his work in the archives of El Escorial and the Cathedral of Toledo. His recent archival research has led to the discovery of many previously unknown works by such important Spanish Renaissance polyphonists as Cristóbal de Morales, Francisco Guerrero, Alonso Lobo and Gines de Boluda.

Noone also has made a name for himself as the conductor of a variety of ensembles in Britain, Australia, Hong Kong and Spain. In a series of recent collaborations, he has recorded six award-winning CDs of Spanish music with the Orchestra of the Renaissance, the Song Company and the Sydney Chamber Choir.