Academy for Learning in Retirement’s May program is all about Jazz

New Mexico State University Regents Professor of Music James Shearer, Ph.D., will present the May series for the Academy for Learning in Retirement (ALR) on “Jazz: Unusual People, Places and Things.”

The sessions will be presented 10:30 a.m.-noon via Zoom Mondays, May 1 and 8, and Wednesdays May 3 and 10, ALR said in a news release.

The cost is $20 for the four May sessions. Attend the live Zoom presentations or watch the recordings.

Register at alr.nmsu@nmsu.edu. ALR will email the Zoom link the evening before each presentation. 

Shearer will cover an entire alternate group of singers known as the "cult vocalists" who explore lyrics with complexity, harmonic depth and unusual sound that must be heard to be believed, ALR said. The series will also explore instrumental jazz artists and their links to non-jazz artists. Vocal and instrumental artists are blending jazz with a wide array of other musical styles that are truly new and different, the news release said.

Shearer teaches graduate, undergraduate and honors students at NMSU and performs in concerts and presents master classes and lectures as a Yamaha performing artist. He has performed in the United States, Canada and Switzerland and toured Japan with the Eastman Wind Ensemble, playing concerts and recording a CD for the Sony Classical label. Shearer toured in Colombia with the NMSU Faculty Brass Quintet and Wind Ensemble for the United States Department of State, also presenting classes in Bogotá and Paipa. 

Shearer is a member of the El Paso Brass, with whom he has released three commercial recordings. An active classical soloist, he continues to appear throughout the U.S. as a guest artist. Shearer is the author of two music appreciation textbooks in use by a number of colleges and universities.