On December 4-6, 2014, the UW School of Music will host the 4th Annual UW/MMSD Jazz Festival, an educational jazz festival featuring workshops and performances by high school big bands from Madison and Middleton, the UW Jazz Orchestra and UW Contemporary Jazz Ensemble, UW jazz faculty, and New York trumpet star Ingrid Jensen.

This 4th annual edition of the UW/MMSD Jazz Festival represents the expansion of the festival into a multi-day event featuring an internationally recognized guest artist and also marks the first time that UW Madison will be the host campus. In its new venue, the festival will continue its original mission of bringing together participating schools in a non-competitive festival environment to focus on students’ peer learning and the exchange of information, developing idiomatic jazz and improvisation skills, building a community of young jazz musicians and connecting them with working professionals, and inspiring student performers to deepen their involvement with the jazz idiom.

Watch the Ingrid Jensen Jazz Quintet perform “At Sea,” at the Berklee College of Music, April 2012

The festival’s expansion and its move to UW Madison as its host campus coincide with a major expansion of UW-Madison’s jazz studies program. Spearheaded by jazz pianist Dr. Johannes Wallmann who joined the School of Music faculty in 2012, the jazz program has added five new jazz ensembles, several new academic jazz courses, and a high school Honors jazz band. In the fall of 2014, the jazz program welcomed new instructors of jazz drums and jazz trombone along with its first cohort of students in the newly re-launched undergraduate jazz major.

2014 UW/MMSD Jazz Festival featured artist Ingrid Jensen has been a major figure on the international jazz scene for over 20 years. Her three CDs for the ENJA label and her latest CD, “At Sea,” won her nominations from the Canadian Juno Awards, including an award in 1995 for Vernal Fields. In addition to her work as a leader of the quartet Project O and the quintet Nordic Connect, Jensen is a featured soloist with the Maria Schneider Orchestra, with whom she recorded four albums, including the Grammy Award-winning “Concert in the Garden” and “Sky Blue,” the former of which was also named Jazz Album of the Year by the Jazz Journalists Association. She regularly places in Downbeat magazines Critics’ and Readers’ polls.

Ingrid Jensen recently made her Madison debut as a member of Terri Lyne Carrington’s Mosaic Project. She is also a member of Darcy James Argue’s Grammy-nominated Secret Society; the Juno-award winning Christine Jensen Orchestra; has been featured on Gil Evans’ Porgy and Bess at the San Francisco Jazz Festival under the direction of Maria Schneider; and has appeared as a guest in the festival’s “Tribute to Woody Shaw and Freddie Hubbard,” alongside Terence Blanchard, Eddie Henderson, Bobby Hutcherson and Kenny Garrett. Other musicians Jensen has performed and or recorded with include Madelaine Peyroux, Ron Carter, Mullgrew Miller, Steve Wilson, Jeff ‘Tain’ Watts, Dr.Lonnie Smith, Marc Copland, Bob Berg, Gary Thomas, Gary Bartz, Jeff Hamilton, Bill Stewart, Terri-Lynn Carrington, Geri Allen, Geoffrey Keezer, Billy Hart, George Garzone, Chris Connor, Victor Lewis, Clark Terry, Frank Wess, Badal Roy, Mike Clark, Jason Miles and Global Noize, Dr. Billy Taylor and the DIVA Big Band. Her performances as a leader and as a featured soloist have taken her around the world from Canada to Japan, Australia, South America, South Africa, the Caribbean and to almost every country in Europe and Scandinavia.

 

Schedule of events:

Thursday, Dec. 4: Trumpet master class with Ingrid Jensen. 1:30 PM, Music Hall.

Thursday, Dec. 4: Small-group jazz improvisation masterclass with Ingrid Jensen and the UW Contemporary Jazz Ensemble. 7:30 PM, Music Hall.

Friday, Dec. 5: Concert with Ingrid Jensen and the Johannes Wallmann Group. 8PM, Morphy Hall.

Saturday, Dec. 6: Headline concert featuring bands from Madison’s East, West and Memorial High School, Middleton High School, the UW Jazz Orchestra, and Ingrid Jensen. 6 PM, Music Hall.