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Grammy Award-winning ensemble will be the final Sound Alternatives performance
The Grammy Award-winning vocal ensemble New York Voices will be the final performance in this year’s Sound Alternatives series at 8 p.m. Saturday, March 29, in the Williams Center for the Arts.
Tickets are free for students, $4 for faculty and staff, and $20 for the public. They can be obtained by calling the Williams Center box office at (610) 330-5009. At 4 p.m. New York Voices will lead a free community workshop in a cappella singing and jazz vocal techniques. They will be coaching the Chamber Singers under the direction of Jennifer Kelly, assistant professor of music, and one of Lafayette’s a cappella ensembles. Everyone is welcome to attend.
New York Voices is a jazz and pop vocal ensemble formed in 1987. Its current members include Kim Nazarian, Peter Eldridge, Darmon Meader, and Lauren Kinhan.
The ensemble often uses vocalese in their performances. Vocalese is the practice of putting newly invented texts or non-sense syllables to a recorded jazz improvisation. However, the group also demonstrates Brazilian, R&B, classical, and pop influences in their singing. At the concert, New York Voices will perform arrangements of show tunes, American songbook standards, and original works.
Guest appearances on recordings and live performances have earned the group critical acclaim and demand in a variety of musical settings. New York Voices can be heard on such CDs as the Grammy Award-winning Count Basie Orchestra with New York Voices: Live at Manchester Craftsmen’s Guild, and the Latin Grammy Award-winning Brazilian Dreams with the Paquito D’Rivera, as well as many more. The group has had the pleasure of performing with a number of influential jazz artists including Ray Brown, Bobby McFerrin, Nancy Wilson, George Benson, Jon Hendricks, Annie Ross, the Boston Pops, Diana Krall, and Paquito D’Rivera.
The CD A Day Like This was released by MCG Jazz records in August 2007.
The 2007-2008 Performance Series at Lafayette College is supported in part by gifts from Friends of the Williams Center for the Arts; by provisions of the Josephine Chidsey Williams Endowment, J. Mahlon and Grace Buck Fund, the Croasdale Fund, the Class of ’73 Fund, the Alan and Wendy Pesky Artist-in-Residence Program, the James Bradley Fund, and the Ed Brunswick Jazz Fund; and by grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation, Pennsylvania Performing Arts on Tour; the F.M. Kirby Foundation, the Dexter and Dorothy Baker Foundation, and the New England Foundation for the Arts.