MARCH 2015

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Lexington, VA -- Terry Vosbein offers up his visions of classic French songs with a nine-piece jazz band on Saturday night, March 7th at 8pm. The concert will take place in Washington and Lee’s Wilson Hall and is free and open to the public. Songs made famous by Edith Piaf, Jacques Brel, Charles Trenet and Charles Aznavour will be the basis for the evening’s sounds. Vosbein’s jazz interpretations will be the focus. A reception follows the performance, offering the audience a chance to meet and greet the performers and one another.

The jazz nonet includes many of Vosbein’s favorite musicians and collaborators, all first-class virtuosi and creative improvisers. WLU jazz and saxophone instructor Tom Artwick and Vosbein’s most frequent musical partner Tom Lundberg, are joined by trumpeters Chris Magee and Rich Willey, Rick Simerly on trombone, Don Aliquo on sax, Tony Nalker on piano, Rusty Holloway on bass and Keith Brown on the drums. The collective experiences of these nine musicians reads like a history of jazz over the past half century.

A long-time WLU Music Professor, Vosbein has spent extended periods of time living and composing in Paris. “Every day as I strolled through Paris I would hear these songs, from street musicians, from club performers, from whistling pedestrians.” So he set out to recast the familiar melodies in a cool jazz mold, retaining the spirt of the originals, but embedding them with his own swinging vision. There were so many beautiful songs from which to pick, many that later became English language hits (What Now My Love, If You Go Away, Beyond the Sea). Vosbein chose an even dozen, and then wrote a new song of his own to cap to all off. Max Frank Music will be recording the concert for a future release.

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