The Ithaca College Jazz program will present two free concerts: The Tuesday-Thursday Jazz Band performs with guest vocal soloist Giacomo Gates on Friday, April 13, and the Wednesday Jazz Band welcomes Emily Wilkins and Ellen Quinn as vocal soloists on Thursday, April 19. Both concerts begin at 8:15 p.m. in Ford Hall under the direction of Steve Brown. The Vocal Jazz Ensemble under Lauri Robinson-Keegan’s direction will make a guest appearance on the April 13 concert as well.
Giocomo Gates did not begin performing publicly until he was forty years old. Before that he drove school busses and 18-wheelers, worked road and railway construction and other blue collar work, spending14 years in Alaska. "Two things always struck me out there," Giacomo says of his Alaskan experience, "feeling insignificant and feeling very alive." With severe risk to life and limb from all sorts of dangers ranging from geographic disorientation to heavy machinery accidents to hungry polar bears, Gates was confronted with sights, sounds and experiences that had a profound effect upon his being, and therefore his art. In his own words, "In this kind of music it's about intention, honesty and what comes through in your voice - the Experience of Life."
Playing major U.S. clubs, New York's Birdland, the Five Spot and the Jazz Standard, Philadelphia's Zanzibar Blue, Blues Alley in D.C. and Snug Harbor in New Orleans; and major festivals like Detroit/Montreux, Telluride, Caramoor, Sedona, Clearwater, Fairbanks Summer Arts, etc.; and at countless universities and jazz societies, Giacomo's enormous appeal and popularity are obvious from the many repeat engagements he has had at these venues. He has also performed and taught in Europe and has toured Australia twice.
For more information on Gates, visit http://www.giacomogates.com/.
For more information on Ithaca College School of Music concerts, go to www.ithaca.edu/concerts or call 274-3717