Jumpstart Jazz

The Jumpstart Jazz Festival will be presented live and in person Friday and Saturday, Nov. 12-13 at the NMSU Music Building, 1075 N. Horseshoe St., on campus.

The event will include performances as well as workshops conducted for area middle- and high-school students from Las Cruces, El Paso, Alamogordo and other local communities, said Jacob Dalager, DMA (doctor of musical arts), who is the event’s principal organizer.

The public is invited to attend workshops and performances at no charge, Dalager said.

Dalager said the festival’s name includes “jumpstart” because its goal, in part, is to reignite the interest and enthusiasm of music students as the marching-band season winds down. The festival was started by retired NMSU trumpet professor Pancho Romero, who will participate in this year’s event, Dalager said.

Clinicians and performers will include:

• Legendary trumpet player Bobby Shew, 80, a native of Albuquerque, will participate virtually. Shew has played trumpet with Tommy Dorsey, Woody Herman and Buddy Rich, among others. Shew began his professional career in 1960. His album “Outstanding In His Field” was nominated for a 1980 Grammy award. Shew has done studio work on many popular television.
• Award-winning saxophonist and composer Owen Broder of New York City, who performs with Anat Cohen and Cowboys & Frenchmen. Broder will conduct guest clinics and master classes and perform with the NMSU Jazz Ensemble during the festival. Dalager and Broder attended Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York, at the same time, and played in the same big band at Eastman, as well as an extracurricular soul/funk band. Dalager plays the trumpet.
• Local all-stars Ricky Malachi (drums) and Al Mendez (saxophone) of El Paso and Pancho Romero (trumpet) of Las Cruces, along with NMSU trombone professor Allan Kaplan; mezzo-soprano Sarah Daughtrey, an associate professor music at NMSU; and NMSU regents professor of music and tubist Jim Shearer.

Dalager said Broder’s performances will include two of his own compositions: “Pensativa,” which will feature Daughtrey on vocals, and “Wayfarer” (world premiere). Broder also will perform “The Willow,” composed and arranged by the Grammy-award winner Maria Schneider.

Kaplan, Broder and Dalager will perform in “A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square,” written in 1939 by Manning Sherwin. Malachi will perform a drum solo from “Patience,” by Fred Sturm. Daughtrey will sing “A Day in the Life of a Fool,” by Luis Bonfa, in Portuguese, Dalager said. Shearer will perform “St. James Infirmary.”

Dalager is the trumpet and jazz professor in the NMSU Music Department. A native of Minnesota, he came to Las Cruces from Maryland to begin teaching at NMSU this fall.

For more information, contact Dalager at jdalager@nmsu.edu.

Visit facebook.com/NMStateJazz for more information and festival updates.