Academy Jazz Band and Ensembles with Thomas Chapin Guest Artist: Stan Strickland

Start Date: May 24 4:00 PM
This event is open to the public

The Phillips Academy Music Department will present the 2008-2009 Chapin Guest Artist: The Stan Strickland Quintet: Jazz, Blues and Beyond. Also performing is the Academy Jazz Band and ensembles. This concert, free and open to the public, will take place in the Cochran Chapel on the Phillips Academy campus, 180 Main Street, Andover. Cochran Chapel is handicapped accessible.

Click on the image to the left to view the PDF poster.

Singer, saxophonist, flutist, actor Stan Strickland has performed throughout the United States, Europe, Scandinavia, the Caribbean, New Zealand and the former Soviet Union. In addition to numerous radio and television appearances, Stan has performed in many clubs and concert halls, including Jordan and Symphony Halls in Boston, Carnegie Recital Hall and Town Hall in New York, and at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. His work has been featured on recordings by Bob Moses, Marty Erlich, Webster Lewis and Brute Force. Stan has performed with jazz greats Yusef Lateef, Pharoah Sanders, Herbie Mann, Danilo Perez, Shirley Scott and Marlena Shaw. Love & Beauty, Stan's new jazz vocal CD, featuring new arrangements of great jazz classics as well as original material, was released by Hawkline Records in 2005.

Stan has opened for Jazz greats Miles Davis and Sonny Rollins, and for Barenaked Ladies. He toured South Africa with The Village People, and was a featured soloist with Take Six and the Boston Pops at Symphony Hall. His acting experience includes the leading roles in the Boston Art Group's production of Harlem Renaissance, NotheasternUniversity's production of Crossing John, and Dr. Sax in a production of Jon Lipsky's play about Jack Kerouac, Maggie's Riff, produced by the Vineyard Playhouse. Stan has performed and collaborated with over a dozen choreographers including Alvin Ailey, Jose Limon, and Bill T. Jones.

He has performed at the prestigious Sundance Film Festival for the premiere of Academy Award winning documentary Born into Brothels and at three exclusive fashion/fragrance events for fashion icon Donna Karan.

Stan has a M.A. degree from Lesley College in Expressive Arts Therapy where he is an adjunct professor. He also teaches at Berklee College of Music, Tufts University and Longy School of Music. Stan is Co-Executive Director of Express Yourself, a multidisciplinary team of professional artists, working in partnership with adolescents in public mental health residential facilities to produce multimedia performances that celebrate the restorative powers of serious art making.

PA graduate Tom Chapin was one of the few musicians who crossed comfortably between the experimentalist jazz scene to mainstream jazz. His performances included everything: bebop, classical music and early jazz. A regular at the Newport Jazz Festival, Chapin was famous for his solos that moved from traditional jazz to the avant garde. After his schooling at the University of Hartford where he studied with saxophonist Jackie McLean, and then at Rutgers where he studied with pianist Kenny Barron, Chapin was a band leader for the Lionel Hampton Orchestra and performed with Chico Hamilton’s Band.

In the late 1980’s, he set out on his own and formed his own trio. He was the first artist signed by the Knitting Factory Records, a label owned by a club of the same name in New York City. In the 1990’s Chapin spent much of his time working with his trio at festivals and clubs around the world and organized larger music groups for special occasions. The list of musicians he played with includes the greats of various jazz factions: John Zorn, Dave Douglas, Ned Rothenberg, Marty Ehrlich, Ray Drummond, Ronnie Matthews, Peggy Stern, Tom Harrell, Anthony Braxton and many, many more. Before his death, Chapin was on a goodwill tour of Uganda and Tanzania. Some of Chapin’s albums are available in the Clift Record library: Third Force, Anima, Radius, I’ve Got Your Number, You Don’t Know Me, Insomnia, Haywire, Inversions and Menagerie Dreams.