Jazz Comes Home
Urbana -- Once, during his program "Jazz from the Kennedy
Center," the jazz pianist, historian and educator Billy Taylor asked trumpeter
Cecil Bridgewater about his career. Bridgewater replied that he had accomplished
more than he ever thought he would.
"I got a chance to meet a lot of people and to perform with
them," he told Taylor. "I've really been blessed from the at standpoint. People
who I thought would never know my name -- I got a chance to meet and perform
with them.
"That's been a thrill."
Those players include jazz greats Horace Silver, Thad Jones, Mel Lewis, Jimmy
Smith, Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis and Art Blakey. Now Bridgewater, who
developed his chops in Champaign-Urbana, returns to his hometown for a weeklong
residency at Krannert Center for the Performing Arts, the first of three for him
over the academic year.
As part of the Jazz Threads initiative, Bridgewater will
engage in a variety of master classes and other events over three weeks. He will
be here next week and again in December and March. His first week will culminate
with a concert at 7:30p.m. Sept. 27 at the Krannert Center.
There, Bridgewater will perform with a band that he put
together for the show: Mulgrew Miller on piano, Kenny Davis on bass, Carl Allen
on drums, and his younger brother, Ron Bridgewater, on saxophone. The
first three are jazz musicians based in New York. Ron Bridgewater is a UI
professor of saxophone who once played with his older brother in the Thad Jones,
Mel Lewis Orchestra. A "Talk back" with the artists will follow the concert
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