PULLMAN, Wash. – A free, public concert featuring guest vocalist Kelly Eisenhour performing with the award-winning Washington State University jazz ensembles VoJazz and Jazz Big Band will be 8 p.m. Tuesday, April 3, in the Kimbrough Music Building on the Pullman campus. Eisenhour earned her undergraduate degree from Berklee College of Music in Boston and graduate degree from the University of Utah. She was an adjunct faculty member at Brigham Young University, where she led an award-winning jazz choir, BYU Jazz Voices, and taught vocal jazz improvisation.
She is sought after as clinician and adjudicator and is an accomplished performer and recording artist. Her latest album, “Seek and Find,” rose to 14th on the JazzWeek national radio airplay charts in 2007. She served as assistant director for Gladys Knight’s gospel choir “Saints Unified Voices,” which won a Grammy award for “Best Gospel Choir” in 2006.
Eisenhour has appeared as a guest soloist with the Boston Pops, invited performer at the International Association for Jazz Education conference in New York and soloist with the Utah Symphony. She is a faculty member at Green River Community College in Auburn, Wash.
VoJazz, directed by Dean Luethi, will begin the concert with: Anders Jalkeus’ arrangement of “There Will Never Be Another You,” made popular by the vocal jazz ensemble “The Real Group;” Steve Zegree’s arrangement of “But Beautiful;” Kirby Shaw’s arrangement of “When I Fall In Love;” and the Jennifer Barnes swing/hip-hop arrangement of the Cole Porter tune “Get Out of Town.”
Eisenhour will join VoJazz for “But Beautiful” and “Get out of Town.”
The Jazz Big Band, directed by Greg Yasinitsky and Frederick “Dave” Snider, will perform the standards “Pennies from Heaven and “Black Coffee” with vocalist Eisenhour.
Additionally, the band will play: the unique, modern arrangement of Don Redman’s 1920s composition “Chant of the Weed” as arranged by Fred Sturm; the classic “Big Brother,” written especially by Billy Byers for the Count Basie band; Wayne Shorter’s modal blues “Footprints,” as arranged by Matt Harris; and Radiohead’s “Bodysnatchers,” arranged by Sturm.
Soloists will include Charles Wicklander, trumpeter Noah Austin and saxophonists Matt Lanka, Jonathan Urmenita and David Erickson.