WILLIAM PATERSON UNIVERSITY’S SPRING JAZZ ROOM SERIES CLOSES WITH TENOR SAXOPHONE LEGEND GEORGE COLEMAN

The curtain closes on William Paterson University’s spring 2002 Jazz Room Series on Sunday, March 10 as George Coleman, the veteran jazz saxophonist, joins the University Jazz Ensemble led by jazz professor David Demsey. Concert time is 4 p.m. in the Shea Center for Performing Arts on campus in Wayne. A 3 p.m. informal discussion, open to the public, with the afternoon’s performers, titled "Sittin’ In," in Shea 101 is a special feature of the series.

The concert opens with a half-hour set by a student jazz ensemble. Admission prices are $12 standard and $9 senior citizens.

Coleman, a tenor saxophonist who once played alongside Miles Davis, expresses his mainstream/blues styles in this concert. Part of the rich Memphis jazz scene of the early 1950s, Coleman started playing in blues bands in the South, notably with B. B. King. From Memphis he moved up the river to Chicago and then on to New York to play with the Max Roach Quartet, the Slide Hampton Octet, and the Miles Davis Quintet. Coleman’s career in the last quarter of the twentieth century is a whirlwind of recordings, performances across the globe, and opportunities as educator and clinician.

David Demsey, professor of music and coordinator of jazz studies at William Paterson University who will lead the ensemble, is an integral part of the internationally recognized jazz program at the University. In addition to his role as an educator, he is a performer and clinician. Demsey recently received the New Jersey Jazz Educator of the Year Award, and in January, he was featured with the American Saxophone Quartet in a world premiere with the National Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Leonard Slatkin at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC.

William Paterson University is a flagship of jazz education. For more than 25 years its internationally known Jazz Studies Program has offered a true jazz environment in which students study firsthand with an artist/teacher faculty composed of world-class, New York-area professionals. The program has created and fostered the nationally acclaimed Jazz Room Series of concerts each fall and spring and the summer Jazz It Up! Festival. Both programs are designed to make jazz more accessible to the community and draws thousands of jazz fans to the University’s campus.

For information, call the Shea Center for Performing Arts Box Office at 973-720-2371.

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2/11/02
For Further Information, contact:

Mary Beth Zeman, Director, Public Relations 973-720-2966