Loyola's Montage Series Continues With Free Concerts

Loyola's Montage Fine and Performing Arts Series continues this month with a series of free concerts by faculty and student ensembles.

The events continue with the weekly recital hour Thursday, April 11 at 12:45 p.m.. The concert features a faculty jazz octet performing Loyola Coordinator of Jazz Studies John Mahoney's 1978 work, "Time Travel." The 12-minute song begins in a bebop style and evolves into a variety of other styles, including cool jazz, Dixieland, modal and free. The octet will feature Ray Moore and Tony Dagradi on saxophones, Nick Volz and Jimmy Weber on trumpets, Larry Sieberth on piano, Calvin Moran-Martin on bass, John Vidacovich on drums and Mahoney on trombone. A guitar ensemble and a clarinet group will also perform during the recital hour, which is set for Nunemaker Auditorium in Monroe Hall.

The Loyola Symphony Orchestra, directed by Jean Montès, D.M.A., will present an evening of great composers in its season finale performance Saturday, April 13 at 7:30 p.m. in Roussel Hall. The program will begin with "Isle of the Dead" by Sergei Rachmaninoff. Loyola senior Alex Mayon, the 2013 Loyola Concerto/Aria Competition trumpet winner, will perform "Concerto for Trumpet," one of Henri Tomasi's most popular compositions. Student Max Welch will also premiere his new work, which was the winner of the 2013 Loyola Composition Competition. The evening will conclude with Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov's symphonic suite "Scheherazade."

On Saturday, April 20 at 3 p.m. in Roussel Hall, the Loyola Concert Band and the Loyola Wind Ensemble, directed by Joseph Hebert, Ph.D., will perform a program featuring Percy Grainger's "Irish Tune from County Derry," Ralph Vaughan Williams' "English Folk Song Suite" and AlfRed Reed's "A Springtime Celebration." The Loyola University Chorus will join the musicians to perform "The Battle on Ice" from Sergei Prokofiev's Alexander Nevsky Suite, as arranged by Hebert.

The Loyola Jazz Band concert Sunday April 21 at 3 p.m. in Roussel Hall will include several new arrangements, including "Before You Go," which features three graduating seniors: Nick Ellman on clarinet, Wayne Mitchell on tenor sax, and Griffin Semple on guitar. The band, directed by Mahoney, will also play Slide Hampton's arrangement of J.J. Johnson's melody "Lament;" several Jim McNeely songs, including one inspired by the Swiss artist Paul Klee; Horace Silver's "Cookin' at the Continental," as arranged by Michael Abene for the GRP All-Star Big Band; and "Count 'Em," a Quincy Jones number originally written for Count Basie.