WHEN: Sunday, October 8, 3- 5 PM
WHERE: Madison Community Arts Center, 10 Kings Road in Madison, NJ
ADMISSION: $10 for NJJS members and $15 for non-members.
There will be light refreshments for purchase.
To order tickets, log onto https://madison-arts-and-culture-alliance.ticketleap.com/new-jersey-jazz-society-concert-oct/. Tickets may also be purchased at the door.
Pianist Bill Mays has recorded 40 albums as a
leader, but his newest, Autumn
Serenade, released in May on the Sunnyside label, may be his favorite. And it reunited him with the other two members of a trio that played with baritone
saxophonist Gerry Mulligan in the 1980s—bassist Dean Johnson and drummer Ron
Vincent.
This trio will be performing several selections from Autumn Serenade at the
New Jersey Jazz Society’s Jersey Jazz LIVE! concert. There will also be some new original compositions,
mostly written by Mays during Covid.
Among the selections from Autumn
Serenade likely to be
featured at Jersey Jazz Live! are the title track, written by Sammy Gallop and
Peter De Rose and made famous by John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman; Mays’
“Autumn with Vivaldi”, incorporating a melodic theme with the composer’s
celebrated “Four Seasons”; Wayne Shorter’s “Fall”; and a spirited
transformation of Bernice Petkere’s “Lullaby of the Leaves”, a favorite of the
late pianist Jimmy Rowles.
In his review of Autumn
Serenade, Dan Bilawsky of AllAboutJazz called it “a bountiful harvest
of seasonally bound beauties . . . a musical journey filled with reflection and
romance. As seasonscapes go,” Bilawsky added, “it’s truly hard to beat this
set. While approaching 80 years of age, Bill Mays remains at the top of his
game.”
In addition to Mulligan, Mays has played with such well-known jazz
artists as alto saxophonists Phil Woods and Bud Shank, vocalist Mark Murphy,
and trumpeter Freddie Hubbard. He remembers that when he moved from Los Angeles
to New York in the early 1980s, his first East Coast gig was playing with
Shank, bassist Ray Drummond, and drummer Ronnie Bedford at the now defunct New
Jersey club, Gulliver’s in West Paterson.
The Bill Mays Trio will be preceded by a Rising Stars opening act featuring a trio of William
Paterson University Jazz Studies students led by trumpeter Violet Mujica, a
resident of Montclair, NJ. The other members of the trio are guitarist Sam
Wagner from Saratoga Springs, NY, and bassist Julian Rogai from Delaware Water
Gap, PA. At Jazz at Lincoln Center’s 2022 Essentially Ellington competition,
Mujica received Honorable Mention on trumpet as a member of the Jazz House Kids
Band.
Funding for Jersey Jazz LIVE! has been made possible, in part, by funds from Morris Arts through the New Jersey State Council on the Arts/Department of State, a partner agency of The National Endowment for the Arts.
Photo by Judy Kirtley
