Beta Tau Delta sponsored concert
Although the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra, which will appear in Jefferson on April 9, didn’t win a Grammy this year, the 16-piece band was in good company.
Its album, “OverTime: Music of Bob Brookmeyer,” was among five nominated for a 2014 Emmy in the large Jazz ensemble category.
Winner of the Emmy was “Life in a Bubble,” by Gordon Goodwin’s Big Phat Band.
The Vanguard Orchestra’s Grammy-nominated album,“OverTime,” consists of four new arrangements written to highlight the band’s ensemble and soloists, plus three previously unheard statements by the late Bob Brookmeyer, delivered to Mel Lewis, a founder of the Vanguard Orchestra, in the early 1980s, plus Brookmeyer’s Grammy Award-winning arrangement of “Skylark” featuring saxophonist Dick Oatts, a Jefferson High School graduate who will appear in the April 9 concert sponsored by Beta Tau Delta, a children’s charity.
You can listen to selections from the album here.
Brookmeyer, a former musical director of the Vanguard Orchestra, was a trombonist who played with many jazz greats, inlcuding Stan Getz and Gerry Mulligan.
The Vanguard Orchestra is led by John Mosca, husband of former Jefferson resident Nancy Oatts. Also appearing at the April 9 concert will be Jim Oatts, a trumpet player who leads the Des Moines Big Band, and Sue Oatts, a Minneapolis jazz vocalist.
The Oatts kids’ father, Jack Oatts, who founded high school jazz competition in Iowa, was high school band director in Jefferson from 1966 to 1985.
