Jazz Arts Project presents...

Talkin' Jazz 2015

A free lecture series on April 20 & April 27, 2015

Performing Arts Academy Headquarters

A new event space located right next door to the Count Basie Theatre

111 Monmouth Street, Red Bank, NJ 07701

April is Jazz Appreciation month as declared by the U.S. Congress and supported and promoted by the Smithsonian Institute. While we here at the Jazz Arts Project feel that it’s important to appreciate jazz year round, we will be holding a series of talks by jazz luminaries this spring that serve as a great introduction to jazz for novices or as a wonderful extension of knowledge for connoisseurs.

These lectures will take place this year at our new event space right next to the Count Basie Theatre on two consecutive Mondays, beginning April 20, 2015. This roster of speakers is one of our finest to date, and we are very excited to present them to you, as always, free of charge. Space is limited however, so you should register today to ensure a spot!

Monday, April 20th at 7:00 pm

Nelson Riddle, the man behind "The Voice"

Speaker: Rosemary Riddle Acerra

NELSON RIDDLE was one of the greatest arrangers in the history of American popular music. He worked with many of the major pop vocalists of his day, but it was his immortal work with Frank Sinatra, particularly on the singer's justly revered Capitol concept albums, that cemented Dad's enduring legacy. He was a master of mood and subtlety, and an expert at drawing out a song's emotional subtext. He was highly versatile in terms of style, mood and tempo, and packed his charts full of rhythmic and melodic variations and rich tonal colors that blended seamlessly behind the lead vocal line. He often wrote specifically for individual vocalists, keeping their strengths and limitations in mind and pushing them to deliver emotionally resonant performances. This is evidenced certainly in his work with Sinatra in the following quote from Charles Granata's book "Sessions with Sinatra,": "It quickly became apparent that Riddle, of all the arrangers the singer had worked with, complemented Sinatra's talents better than anyone else."

Monday, April 27rd at 7:00 pm

Centennial Tribute

Frank Sinatra and Billie Holiday

Speaker: Author and Journalist Will Freewald

Will Friedwald has written for such newspapers as The New York Times, The Village Voice, Newsday,The New York Observer, and The New York Sun, and for such magazines as Entertainment Weekly, Oxford American, New York, Mojo, BBC Music Magazine, Stereo Review, Fi(Delity), and other music and film journals.

His books include "Jazz Singing: America's Great Voices from Bessie Smith to Bebop," and "Beyond, Sinatra! The Song is You: A Singer's Art," among others. His Sinatra bio was awarded the 1996 ASCAP Deems Taylor Award for Excellence in Music Criticism.