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Musician and composer Bill Warfield lives for the kind of event that is unfolding next weekend at Lehigh University's Zoellner Arts Center. Since he came to Lehigh in 1997 and started the Lehigh Valley Jazz Repertory Orchestra, which performs at the center, Warfield also has wanted to create original programming for the center. In a way, he's already accomplished some of that. The debut performance of the repertory orchestra in October 1997 featured an extended Warfield composition, `Le Jazz Hot,` based on the Parisian jazz of the 1920s and featuring David Liebman, the internationally known saxophonist who lives in the Stroudsburg area. Next weekend's events will begin Friday with another original Warfield composition, `Beneath The Stacks: The Second Line of the Industrial Revolution,` based on the history of Bethlehem, from its earliest days as a Moravian settlement to the aftermath of Bethlehem Steel's departure from the city. To add excitement, members of the respected jazz group the Yellowjackets will join members of Warfield's Repertory Orchestra, Lehigh faculty members and Lehigh students in the ensemble that will debut the Warfield piece. The Yellowjackets will return to the Zoellner Arts Center next Saturday night to present a concert of their own music. `Since I arrived here, this is the sort of thing I've wanted to do,` Warfield says. `I want to do something creative. That's what an arts center should be about. I just didn't want to do packaged performances.` Warfield was putting the finishing touches on the extended piece last week. When he writes a larger piece like `Beneath the Stacks,` Warfield pulls a few tune fragments from what he calls his `ditty shelf,` a place where he keeps scribbled tunes. `I'm always writing these little ditties. When I start a larger piece, I go to my ditty shelf and pick something that can work,` Warfield says. The arrangement of the piece, a process that is rapidly becoming one of the lost arts of jazz, will be the most difficult part of the entire process, Warfield says. Warfield said the piece will have two musical quotations: the original `O Little Town of Bethlehem` and the Ralph Vaughn Williams version of the original, which the British composer used in his folk-song adaption, `In Bethlehem City.` To help with background for the composition, Warfield spoke with Bob Thompson, a South Bethlehem resident who has been involved with the community for decades. Thompson, who also is chairman of the city's South Side Task Force, suggested some books for Warfield to read to help him understand Bethlehem's history. In reading the city's history, Warfield was especially impressed with the way the native Lenni Lenape interacted with the Moravian settlers. `It was one of the few places where people got along,` Warfield says. Included in the program will be images of paintings by Fernand Leger, the French cubist who was influenced for a time by the geometric symbolism of the American Industrial Revolution. Leger paintings from this period will be shown on a screen behind the musicians. Warfield's wife, Carol Heft, an abstract artist, suggested that Warfield use the Leger images in connection with the Bethlehem piece. While Warfield had been thinking of writing a piece inspired by Bethlehem history for some time, the addition of the Yellowjackets was the result of a chance encounter last summer when Warfield was touring Europe with the Lehigh University Orchestra. During a stopover in Prague, Warfield was sitting in a hotel lobby and, as he tells it, `I look up and there's Bob Mintzer,` a saxophonist and a relatively new member of the Yellowjackets (the group was formed by guitarist Robben Ford in 1977). Though still a quartet, the group's only original member is keyboardist Russell Ferrante. Warfield and Mintzer have known each other for some time, and both have arranged big-band charts. The two started talking and, later, some of the Lehigh people attended the Yellowjackets' concert in Prague. Some students and other members of the touring orchestra hung out with the Yellowjackets after the performance, Warfield says. Because of the interaction, the pianist with the orchestra, Eugene Albulescu, who is also a faculty member at Lehigh, wondered aloud if the Yellowjackets could perform at Lehigh anytime soon. That question stands to be answered next weekend. The Lehigh Valley Jazz Repertory Orchestra will perform at 8 p.m. Friday with the Yellowjackets in Baker Hall in the Zoellner Arts Center at Lehigh University, 420 E. Packer Ave., Bethlehem. A free open rehearsal will be at 2 p.m. Friday. The Yellowjackets will perform there at 8 p.m. next Saturday. Tickets for the Lehigh Jazz event are $17; tickets for the Yellowjackets are $23 and $18. 610-758-2787. Written by Tim Blangger "The Morning Call" Contact Tim Blangger 610-820-6722 tim.blangger@mcall.com
A dynamic and innovative composer, clinician and educator, Bill Warfield has energized audiences, performers and writers for more than two decades. After obtaining an M.M. in Jazz Commercial Trumpet from the Manhattan School of Music, Bill received the William H. Borden Award for Outstanding Accomplishment in Jazz/Commercial Music, The Carmine Caruso Award for Outstanding Musicality and Trumpet performance and the Maynard Ferguson Scholarship. He is also an alumni of the BMI Jazz Composers Workshop, directed by Bob Brookmeyer and Manny Albam. In 2002, Bill recorded Hard Bop with his quintet, a group comprised of some of the finest musicians in New York. The same year, he collaborated with arranger Russ Anixter on a recording of the Fusion Ensemble playing big band charts based on the music of Led Zeppelin. The band currently performs at the Triad in New York City the first Monday of every month. In the fall of 2000, Bill Warfield composed and conducted a concert with the The Yellow Jackets entitled “Beneath the Stacks, Second Line of the Industrial Revolution”, which was performed at Lehigh University and featured the Lehigh Valley Jazz Repertory Orchestra. In 1999 Bill collaborated with David Leibman on “Le Jazz Hot”, a tribute to the composers of Les Six, which was performed in Paris at the LaVillette Jazz Festival, July 2000. Among his other accomplishments is a commission by the government of Spain to arrange and produce Hollywood Jazz, a musical review for the 1992 Olympic year, and a commission by the Berlin Radio Orchestra to write two works for big band. Warfield has performed with many well known jazz and commercial artists including Ornette Coleman, The American Jazz Orchestra directed by John Lewis, Mel Lewis, Paul Anka, Mel Torme, Randy Brecker, David Sanborn, Sonny Stitt, Sheila Jordan and Lester Bowie, among others. He was an NBC staff musician for the 1995 VIDA awards and has been an orchestrator for Eddie Palmieri and Lester Bowie. Early in his career, Warfield was a performer and contributing writer for the Bill Kirchner Nonet on Seabreeze Records. Presently, he is on the advisory board of the Baltimore Jazz Orchestra, where he plays lead trumpet. He was the director of the jazz ensemble at the Brooklyn Conservatory of Music at the City University of New York, Director of Jazz Studies at the Dalton School in New York, and Assistant Professor of Jazz Trumpet at the University of North Florida. He has been commissioned by the US Air Force Airmen of Note, and has appeared with the United States Navy Commodores as a clinician. In 1996 and 1997, The Bill Warfield Big Band was featured at Birdland in New York City as part of the Apple Band Cavalcade. The Band’s first release, New York City Jazz (Interplay) received critical acclaim from Leonard Feather, Chuck Berg, Syd Levin, John Wilson, and Tom Conrad in CD Review magazine. The band’s second album, The City Never Sleeps (Seabreeze) was hailed by Kim Richmond in Jazz Player magazine. In 1995, Warfield co-produced a recording with guitarist Dave Stryker entitled Nomad (Steeplechase). The Bill Warfield Big Band was featured at the International Association of Jazz Educators conference in 1994 and 1998, and at the New York City Brass Conference 1991, 95, 97, 98, and 99. In addition to his professional career as an international performer, recording artist, band leader and producer, Bill Warfield is currently Assistant Professor in the Lehigh University music department. He is the recipient of the first Frank Hook Assistant Professorship Award (2000), and the Franz/Class of 1968 Award for outstanding professional achievements (2000). In 1997 he founded The Lehigh Valley Jazz Repertory Orchestra, a non-profit organization dedicated to the recreation of classic jazz performances as well as the creation of new works for jazz orchestra. Bill Warfield is active in the International Association of Schools of Jazz and the International Association of Jazz Educators. He has been included in the Biographical Encyclopedia of Jazz (Ira Gitler and Leonard Feather.) Bill Warfield has been selected for the Pennsylvania Performing Arts on Tour roster of artists. Funding from PennPAT may be available for presenters throughout themid-Atlantic region. (Washington DC., DE, MD, NJ, NY, OH, PA, VA, WV, and the US Virgin Islands |
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