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Famed Vanguard Band Comes to So. California

Appears Feb. 6 in Orange County

BY LARRY TAYLOR

On Feb. 6, West Coast jazz fans will have a chance to see and hear the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra at the Renee and Henry Segerstom concert Hall of the Orange County Performing Arts Center, during a rare California appearance. 

Starting up in New York City,  Feb. 7, 1966, at the Village Vanguard Club, the band was recognized in the beginning as an exceptional ensemble. Leaders of the new group were Thad Jones, cornetist, composer and arranger, and Mel Lewis, drummer.

What no one could have predicted was that this Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Orchestra would become one of the most acclaimed and innovative big bands in jazz history. It would go on to tour extensively throughout three continents, with its offspring, the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra, still in residence on Monday nights over 40 years  later, featuring a group of today’s brightest jazz performers.

For over four decades the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra has been committed to engaging audiences in jazz and related American music experiences. The orchestra serves as a creative outlet for some of the nation's foremost performers, composers, and arrangers. One of the driving forces behind the longevity and artistic excellence of this ensemble is a commitment to the original  Jones/Lewis orchestra precepts of sound and the nurturing and encouragement of creativity and experimentation in the creators, jazz performers and listeners of jazz.

As quoted from the New Yorker magazine, “The band’s orchestral colors, rhythms and formal strategies could take on modernist garb, but the band has always had a shout-it-out loud enthusiasm, producing huge tones that are both thrilling and Precise.”

The orchestra comes to the center fresh from being nominated for a Grammy Award for Instrumental Arrangement to band-member Jimmy McNeely for the recently released CD, “Up From the Stars.”

The Vanguard Orchestra appearance is part of the Philharmonic Society Eclectic Orange series which celebrates the eclectic nature of the cultural landscape–ignoring boundaries separating arts disciplines, mixing classical, jazz and world music.

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