Fri

1/15/2010

8:00pm

Jazz

Ellen Rowe Quartet

CD Release Concert!

• $25 Assigned Rows 1-2
• $15 Assigned Rows 3-5
• $10 General Admission
• $5 Student

• Ellen Rowe, piano
• Ingrid Jensen, trumpet
• Andrew Bishop, saxophone
• Kurt Krahnke, bass
• Pete Siers, percussion

Event Details

Ellen brings her quartet back to KCH to celebrate the quartet's latest CD release with Ingrid Jensen, Andrew Bishop, Kurt Krahnke and Pete Siers. The album is called "Wishing Well" and consists of Ellen's original material and an arrangement of "Alone Together".

Ellen Rowe

Ellen Rowe, jazz pianist and composer, is currently Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Jazz and Contemporary Improvisation at the University of Michigan. She is a graduate of the Eastman School of Music, where she studied with Rayburn Wright and Bill Dobbins. Prior to her appointment in Michigan, she served as Director of Jazz Studies at the University of Connecticut.

Winner of the Hartford, CT Advocate Readers’ Poll for Best Acoustic Jazz, Ms. Rowe has performed at jazz clubs and on concert series throughout the U.S., as well as touring in Germany, Holland, Switzerland, Ireland, Poland, and Australia. Also active as a clinician, she has given workshops and master classes at the Melbourne Conservatory, Hochshule fur Musik in Cologne, and the Royal Academy of Music in London, in addition to many appearances as a guest artist at festivals and Universities around the country.

When not leading her own quartet, she is in demand as a sideman, having performed with a wide variety of jazz artists including Kenny Wheeler, Tim Ries, Tom Harrell, John Clayton, Ingrid Jensen, and Steve Turre. She has also been a guest on two installments of Marian McPartland’s “Piano Jazz” on National Public Radio, most recently in March of 2003. Her two CDs as a leader, Sylvan Way (2000) and Denali Pass (2005) have received extensive airplay and critical acclaim. Her latest CD Wishing Well will be released in the fall of 2009.

Ms. Rowe's compositions and arrangements have been performed and recorded by jazz ensembles and orchestras around the world, including the Village Vanguard Orchestra, BBC Jazz Orchestra, U.S. Navy Commodores, Berlin and NDR Radio Jazz Orchestras, London Symphony, DIVA, and the Perth Jazz Orchestra. Many of these works can be heard on recently released CD’s including Leave It To Diva, The Perth Jazz Orchestra, Bingo (The Bird of Paradise Orchestra) and I Believe In You (DIVA). She has recently been a composer-in-residence at the Eastman School of Music and the University of Wisconsin at Madison. Her big band compositions are currently published by Sierra Music Publications.

Having been selected to conduct the MENC All-Eastern and All-Northwest Jazz Ensembles as well as All-State jazz ensembles throughout the country, Rowe has also been an invited clinician at the Music Educators National Conference Eastern Division Convention and the International Association of Jazz Educators Convention. Her quartet was recently featured in performance at the 2005 IAJE Conference in Long Beach, California and the 2009 Detroit International Jazz festival.

Ingrid Jensen

Born in Vancouver and raised in Nanaimo, Canada, Ingrid headed east after receiving a number of scholarships to attend the Berklee College of Music in Boston. Since graduating in 1989, her life has contained a whirlwind of musical activities. From her early days playing in the subways of New York, to establishing herself as a leader and soloist in a wide array of musical genres, Ingrid has made her mark. Her three CD's 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.

Her performances as a leader and as a featured soloist have taken her around the world from Canada to Japan, Australia, South America, the Caribbean and to almost every country in Europe and Scandinavia.

Jensen can be heard with the Grammy winning Maria Schneider Orchestra, the IJQ with Geoffrey Keezer, Project O, Nordic Connect and a number of New York-based bands. She has received rave reviews and a strong reputation among critics and peers. In 2003 she was nominated, for the second time, alongside trumpeter Dave Douglas for a Jazz Journalist Association Award in New York and is seen yearly in the top five of the Downbeat Critic polls in the Talent deserving wider recognition category. Ingrid was featured on Gil Evans' Porgy and Bess at the San Francisco Jazz Festival, under the direction of Maria Schneider and was also a guest in the festival's "Tribute to Woody Shaw and Freddie Hubbard", alongside Terence Blanchard, Eddie Henderson, Bobby Hutcherson and Kenny Garrett. Some of the many musicians she has performed and or recorded with include; Steve Wilson, Jeff 'Tain' Watts, Dr.Lonnie Smith, Marc Copland, Bob Berg, Gary Thomas, Gary Bartz, Jeff Hamilton, Bill Stewart, Terri-Lynn Carrington, Geoffrey Keezer, Billy Hart, George Garzone, Chris Connor, Victor Lewis, Clark Terry, Frank Wess, Dr. Billy Taylor and the DIVA Big Band. She also performed on SNL with the British soul star, Corrine Bailey Rae.

Ingrid has been on staff at the Port Townsend Centrum Jazz Workshop for the past five years and from 1990 until 1992 held the professor of Jazz Trumpet chair at the Bruckner Conservatory of Music. Jensen continues to fill her schedule with an astonishing array of artistic creativity as a performer and educator. In addition to performing, she conducts master classes, clinics, and workshops around the world.