Baylor Jazz Ensemble Performance Features Music Of Fred Sturm

by Richard Veit

The Baylor University Jazz Ensemble will present a concert of music by legendary arranger/composer Fred Sturm at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 26, in the Jesse H. Jones Theater of Hooper-Schaefer Fine Arts Center.
The program will open with the only non-Sturm pieces of the evening: Ramon Ricker's arrangement of the Duke Ellington standard, "It Don't Mean a Thing," and then a song called "Only You" by Bob Florence, featuring vocalist Margaret Burt.
Two of the Fred Sturm arrangements are settings of "Do It Again" and "Negative Girl" by Walter Becker and Donald Fagen, otherwise known in pop circles as Steely Dan. Two other Sturm arrangements will be "Milonga Loca" and "Libertango" by Argentinian tango composer Astor Piazzolla. The three Sturm originals to be heard are "Cerulean Sky," "Chronometry" and "Signal Fires."
Fred Sturm's jazz compositions and arrangements have been performed by such artists as Bobby McFerrin, Wynton Marsalis, Bob Brookmeyer, Clark Terry, Phil Woods, Dianne Reeves, Lars Jansson, Enrique Telleria and Hans Ulrik. He received a 1998 Grammy Award nomination and was the 2003 recipient of the ASCAP/IAJE Commission in honor of Quincy Jones, a prize granted annually to one established jazz composer of international prominence.
Baylor jazz students had the opportunity to participate in master classes with Sturm on Feb. 9-10, during the composer's teaching residency on campus.
The concert is free and open to the public. For more information, call the Baylor School of Music at 710-3991.