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Jazz legends to make a rare duet performance
Jazz pianists Kenny Barron and Mulgrew Miller will perform at 8 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 31 as part of the Williams Center for the Arts’ Jazz Masters series.
Tickets are free for Lafayette students, $6 for students at LVAIC schools, $4 for faculty and staff, and $18 for the public. Purchase tickets by calling the Williams Center box office at (610) 330-5009.
Dianne Reeves will close out the Jazz Masters series on Feb. 7 for $27. Tickets for both performances can be purchased for only $38, a 16 percent discount. As the Alan and Wendy Pesky Artist-in-Residence, Miller will provide introductory commentary at 7 p.m. prior to both concerts. The Jazz Masters series is supported by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.
The Los Angles Times named Barron “one of the top jazz pianists in the world” and Jazz Weekly called him “The most lyrical piano player of our time.” Barron has over 40 recordings and was nominated for nine Gammy Awards. He has performed and recorded with jazz greats such as Dizzy Gillespie and James Moody. In 2005, he was inducted into the American Jazz Hall of Fame, and later this month he will receive the Kennedy Center’s Jazz Heritage Award for career accomplishment.
Miller is one of the most recorded pianists of his generation with more than 400 recording sessions as a leader and sideman. During his career, Miller has performed with the Duke Ellington Orchestra, Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers, Woody Shaw’s Quintet, and heads his own successful group, Wingspan. A resident of Easton, the College awarded Miller with the honorary degree of Doctor of Performing Arts in 2006.
The 2008–2009 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, the 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, the Dexter and Dorothy Baker Foundation, and New England Foundation for the Arts. Special thanks to the F.M. Kirby Foundation for extraordinary support of the 25th anniversary season, and to Joan Moran and the Amaranth Foundation for support of the Ravi Shankar commission.