The Billy Strayhorn Orchestra, Culture Blue Coming to MPAC in June

Enjoy an afternoon of big band jazz, featuring The Billy Strayhorn Orchestra under the direction of Michael Hashim, Sunday, June 14, 2015 at 2:30. Tickets are $20-25.

Born in 1915, Billy Strayhorn became an arranger for the renowned Duke Ellington Orchestra at the age of 24. He shared composing, arranging, directing and piano duties with the master himself until his untimely death in 1967. Strayhorn produced prodigious amounts of music for Ellington and many others, including Johnny Hodges, Lena Horne, and The Copasetics. Like Ellington, Strayhorn had a wide-ranging and forward-looking musical mind. Having helped bring big band jazz to its fullest flowering with the Ellington orchestra, and having also been in tune with the first wave of modern jazz or bebop, Strayhorn is often cited as a formative influence by jazz composers and arrangers who came afterward. Strayhorn's artistic collaboration with Ellington was-like their friendship-very close, so close in artistic terms that in some cases it has been hard to tell who actually wrote what.

Alto saxophonist Michael Hashim has frequently performed and recorded music associated with Duke Ellington and, particularly, Billy Strayhorn. He won a National Endowment for the Arts grant in 1989 in support of "Lotus Blossom," a CD devoted to Strayhorn's music, and was nominated for British Jazz Album of the Year for a second Strayhorn album, 1999's "Multicolored Blue."

The Newark Academy Jazz Band will perform prior to the main concert.

Mayo Performing Arts Center, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, presents a wide range of programs that entertain, enrich, and educate the diverse population of the region and enhance the economic vitality of Northern New Jersey. The 2014-2015 season is made possible, in part, by a grant the New Jersey State Council on the Arts/Department of State, a Partner Agency of the National Endowment for the Arts, as well as support received from the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, F.M. Kirby Foundation and numerous corporations, foundations and individuals. The Mayo Performing Arts Center has been designated a Major Presenting Organization by the New Jersey State Council on the Arts.

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