The 37th annual Paradise Valley Jazz Party, one of the longest running live-jazz events in the world, will feature top-level musicians from across the nation on Saturday and Sunday, March 22-23, to perform in the ballroom of the Scottsdale Hilton Resort in Arizona.
This year’s lineup has an exciting international element via two young female musicians who epitomize the global impact of American jazz. Melissa Aldana, a 24-year-old tenor saxophonist of Chilean heritage, was the first female instrumentalist to win the top honor in the 2013 Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz’s annual competition. Vocalist Melissa Morgan is of Filipino descent and was the headliner at the Sixth Annual San Francisco Filipino American Jazz Festival in October at Yoshi’s San Francisco....
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The 37th annual Paradise Valley Jazz Party, one of the longest running live-jazz events in the world, will feature top-level musicians from across the nation on Saturday and Sunday, March 22-23, to perform in the ballroom of the Scottsdale Hilton Resort in Arizona.
This year’s lineup has an exciting international element via two young female musicians who epitomize the global impact of American jazz. Melissa Aldana, a 24-year-old tenor saxophonist of Chilean heritage, was the first female instrumentalist to win the top honor in the 2013 Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz’s annual competition. Vocalist Melissa Morgan is of Filipino descent and was the headliner at the Sixth Annual San Francisco Filipino American Jazz Festival in October at Yoshi’s San Francisco.
Saxophonist Aldana’s historic win was a big new step in her blossoming career. She recently performed at the Umbria Winter Jazz Festival in Orvieto, Italy, and for the New York City jazz scene, including the Winterjazz Festival at Le Poisson Rouge, and at Lincoln Center for the NEA Jazz Masters event. She then will travel to her native Chile to perform at the Providencia Jazz Festival before returning to New York and gigs at the Tribeca Performing Arts Center. Just before her arrival in Arizona, she will perform a duo concert with piano great Kevin Hays (Sonny Rollins, Joe Henderson and many others) at the Jazz Gallery.
Singer Morgan was born in New York City to a Filipina mother and an Irish father. Melissa started playing piano at age 4, winning awards for her skills as a pianist and vocalist by the time she was in high school. She pursued classical voice lessons at age 14 and discovered jazz at 16 by accident after she bought recordings by Billie Holiday and John Coltrane because she heard someone talking about them. The statuesque Morgan (5 feet-9 inches) earned a bachelor’s degree in jazz vocal performance at SUNY Purchase Conservatory of Music in New York, and has performed at many of New York’s top jazz rooms and musical festivals around the U.S. She cites her main influences as Dinah Washington, Etta Jones, Joe Williams and Nancy Wilson. Morgan calls jazz “story-telling music with lots of spirit,” adding “For my goal in delivering music, I’m not trying to reach your head, I’m trying to reach your heart.”
This unusual musical event was started in 1978 by Don Z. Miller, 81, and his late wife, Sue, longtime residents of Paradise Valley. “The party is staged as organized jam sessions of 30- and 45-minutes sets of changing combinations for the 19 national and regional jazz musicians,” Miller said.
During the past 36 years, these events have featured hundreds of the most legendary jazz artists in the world, and this year is no exception. The roster will feature trumpeters Claudio Roditi and Lou Soloff; guitarist Bruce Forman; trombonist Wycliffe Gordon; saxophonists Aldana, Bill Easley and Jerry Donato (Phoenix); vocalist Morgan; pianists Roger Kellaway, Bill Cunliffe and Arizona’s Armand Boatman and Michael Kocour; bassists Nicki Parrott, Rodney Whitaker and Tom Wakeling; and drummers Herlin Riley, Jacob Eary (Phoenix), Pete Swan (Tucson) and global concert and recording star Lewis Nash, a Phoenix native now based in New York.
Seating will be from 6:30 to 11 p.m. Saturday, March 22, and 1 to 6 p.m. Sunday, March 23, at reserved cocktail tables in the Sonoran Ballroom of the Scottsdale Hilton Resort, 6333 N. Scottsdale Road, Scottsdale 85250. Reserved admission is $100 for both days, or $55 for each of the two sessions. For more information and hotel reservations, go to paradisevalleyjazz.com or call 480-948-7993.
The Paradise Valley Jazz Party is an incomparable opportunity to hear great improvised jazz by “the best in the biz.” And unlike in concert settings, the party offers friendly access to talk with musicians between sets, with no expensive VIP or backstage passes required.
Miller was selected as a “Jazz Hero” in 2011 by the international Jazz Journalists Association for being Arizona’s impresario of jazz. As founder and president of Concerts and Music Productions Inc. of Paradise Valley, he organized and led tours to jazz festivals in Europe, as well as producing several Festivals de Jazz in Puerto Peñasco, Sonora, Mexico. He’s the author of two non-fiction books and a publisher of music-instruction books, and was named "Arizona's First Citizen of Jazz" by Arizona Gov. Bruce Babbitt, also named "Promotor Turistico" by the State of Sonora Tourism Department in Sonora, Mexico. He is one of the nine co-founders of Jazz in Arizona Inc., its past president, longtime board member and event-producer, including several Phoenix and Scottsdale Jazz Festivals.
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