ChamberWorks
ChamberWorks
Dartmouth's jazz faculty is joined by bassist Mimi Jones for a performance of jazz standards and original compositions.
Michael Zsoldos, saxophone
Jason Ennis, guitar
Jesse Taitt, piano
Zack O'Farrill, drums
with special guest Mimi Jones, bass
ChamberWorks is a series of free concerts presented by the Hop and the Dartmouth Department of Music, showcasing the talent of faculty and special guests, and is made possible by support from M. Fred Longhurst 1924H Memorial Fund.
Michael Zsoldos
Based in Woodstock, Vermont, woodwind specialist, educator, composer and conductor Michael Zsoldos is a graduate of the Eastman School of Music and Michigan State University, where he studied with Branford Marsalis. He has performed with Paquito D'Rivera, Sheila Jordan, Kevin Mahogony, Houston Person, Luis Perdomo, Jason Palmer, Matt Wilson, Bernadette Peters, Carole King, Ben Vereen, Bebe Winans, Yolanda Adams and many others. Michael's debut CD as a leader, Off the Cuff, is playing on streaming services and jazz radio stations worldwide. Currently, Michael is a member of the NYC-based Miro Sprague Quintet, the Jason Ennis Quartet and Eugene Uman's Convergence Project, a group whose original music merges Colombian rhythms with jazz harmonies. In addition to teaching and performing as a saxophonist, Michael plays and offers instruction on flute and clarinet. Since 2005, Michael has been the instrumental arranger for the Dartmouth College Gospel Choir and Dartmouth Idol. Michael composed the music for the 2017 documentary Seeing Through The Wall: Meeting Ourselves in Palestine and Israel. He was the orchestrator for the musical 21, based on the life of baseball legend Roberto Clemente, which had its premiere at Pointe Park University in Pittsburgh in October 2014. Michael is a lecturer in classical and jazz saxophone at Dartmouth, and for eight years was the jazz and classical saxophone instructor at the University of Vermont. He is on the teaching faculties of the Vermont Jazz Center in Brattleboro and Interplay Jazz and Arts, based in the Upper Valley. He and his wife Elizabeth Reaves are the proud parents of Laszlo Zsoldos, now 2.
Jason Ennis
Guitarist Jason Ennis is an exciting voice in the world of jazz guitar. His unique sound, deep groove and sensitive feel, along with a diverse background in jazz, blues, Brazilian music and classical guitar have made him highly in demand as a soloist, sideman, bandleader and musical director. A graduate of Middlebury College (BA in music), Jason attended Berklee College of Music (Boston) and the San Francisco Conservatory of Music.
Ennis has performed and/or recorded with Karrin Allyson, Tessa Souter (Motéma Music), Charles Neville (The Neville Brothers Band), Paul McCandless (Oregon, The Paul Winter Consort), The Sonya Kitchell Band (Velour Music, Starbucks Hear Music), Vanderlei Pereira and Blindfold Test, actor and musician Joe Morton, The Thomas Bergeron Ensemble, Mary Ann McSweeney's Urban Fado Project, The Ramón Ángel-Rey Trio, Samirah Evans and Her Handsome Devils, Choro da Manhã, The Julio Botti Quintet, Pablo Ziegler and others. Ennis transcribed and edited a collection of solo guitar arrangements by his friend and mentor Gene Bertoncini, which was published in 2012 by Hal Leonard Publishing.
Ennis released his debut recording as a leader, Jota Sete, in June of 2022, which features his original compositions and arrangements of Brazilian and jazz classics. He co-leads the world jazz trio La Voz de Tres, which has released two CDs: La Voz de Tres (2010) and Sueños y Delirios (2014), and the collaborative trio Tone Forest, with pianist Miro Sprague and bassist Marty Jaffe. He is co-composer and musical director for En Diablada, an original music project by Chilean vocalist Natalia Bernal.
Ennis is a senior lecturer in music at Dartmouth College (Hanover, N.H.), where he teaches jazz, world and popular guitar styles and directs a jazz guitar ensemble and is an artist associate in jazz guitar and co-director of small jazz combos at Williams College (Williamstown, Mass.). Currently residing in Pittsfield, Mass., he is a faculty member at Interplay Jazz in Woodstock, Vermont, and has given workshops at colleges and universities throughout the U.S. and Chile.
Zack O'Farrill
Zack O'Farrill is a multi-racial, multi-cultural, multi-musical artist who doesn't believe in the walls that separate us. Growing up in a musical household, the son of classical pianist Alison Deane and jazz pianist, composer and bandleader Arturo O'Farrill, Zack and his brother, the trumpeter Adam O'Farrill, grew up playing and listening to a wide world of music. From the European-concert-music-influenced Afro-Cuban big band jazz of their grandfather, Chico O'Farrill, to the tongue-in-cheek free jazz of Carla Bley, to having a rotation of the Beatles, Steely Dan, Earth Wind and Fire and Oscar Peterson in the car on summer road trips, growing up in the hip-hop generation, and extensive study of music in the New World derived from the African diaspora, Zack has never viewed music with any particular regard to genre.
Zack has performed with a number of artists of various generations and musical viewpoints. He has performed extensively with his father and his brother in many different configurations, including the Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra. Zack was the founding drummer for both the Fred Ho-founded Eco-Music Big Band and the Liberté Big Band. He has collaborated extensively with pianist Albert Marquès, and also performs regularly with saxophonists Livio Almeida and Roy Nathanson, guitarist Jessica Ackerley and many more.
Zack has studied with incredible musicians such as Dave Meade, Vince Cherico, Victor Jones, Kendrick Scott, Justin Dicioccio, John Riley, Miles Okazaki, Roy Nathanson, Arturo O'Farrill, Joe Gonzalez and many more. Zack is a reluctantly good academic and received a bachelor's of fine arts from the CUNY Macaulay Honors College at City College. He is currently working on his master's degree in jazz percussion from the Manhattan School of Music. Zack continues to study a wide variety of subjects independently and with less formal teachers.
Zack is also a dedicated educator who has taught in after-school music programs in New York City since 2010. He is the director of the Fat Afro Latin Jazz Cats youth big band, which offers free instruction to talented and deserving high school students from all boroughs. He has been a faculty member of the Flynn Center Latin Jazz for Teens camp in Burlington, Vermont, for 7 years. He also teaches privately at his home in Brooklyn.
As a composer Zack has had compositions featured on recordings with the Marquès Stinson O'Farrill Trio, the Eco-Music Big Band, and his composition "There's a Statue of José Martí in Central Park" closes the Afro-Latin Jazz Orchestra's Grammy-winning record Cuba: The Conversation Continues. Zack currently leads his own quartet, performing his original music, and is in the process of planning his first record as a leader.
Jesse Taitt
Jesse Taitt currently serves as assistant professor of harmony and jazz composition at Berklee College of Music, lecturer in jazz piano at Dartmouth College, and jazz coach and accompanist at Wellesley College. A graduate of Berklee, Jesse earned dual degrees in jazz composition and professional music, and later pursued graduate studies at William Paterson University.
He began his musical training at Boston Arts Academy, studying classical piano with Harriet Lundberg (Boston Conservatory) and jazz with Hey Rim Jeon through the Berklee City Music Program. He went on to study with acclaimed artists including Bill Charlap, Jim McNeely, Bill Mobley and Vincent Herring, and participated in master classes with Dr. Billy Taylor, Geri Allen, Regina Carter, George Duke, Joanne Brackeen, Patrice Rushen, Hugh Masekela and Cecil Bridgewater.
Jesse has performed with the Boston Pops and R&B legends En Vogue, and served as music director for Jazz Urbane, led by Dr. William Banfield. He remains an active performer in the Boston music scene with his ensemble, the Jesse Taitt Trio.
As an artist-educator with Boston Arts Academy's Alumni Creative Core and a former AmeriCorps and Public Allies leader, Jesse merges performance and community engagement. In 2013, he was invited as an international guest artist by the U.S. Ambassador to Rwanda, where he headlined the Kigali UP Festival and co-led master classes with Joey Blake.
Mimi Jones
For the more than two decades she's been on the scene, bassist/vocalist/producer/label owner and now filmmaker Mimi Jones has reigned supreme, as a sidewoman to an impressive coterie of musicians and as a leader with three original recording projects on her own Hot Tone Music label. The jazz world is happy that Mimi Jones is on the scene. Born Miriam Sullivan in New York City on March 25, 1972, she was raised in the Bronx.
Jones studied classically under the tutelage of Linda McKnight and simultaneously studied at the jazz mobile school on Saturday mornings with bassist Lisle Atkinson. She also studied with jazz masters such as Barry Harris, Ron Carter, Milt Hinton, Dr. Billy Taylor, Yusef Lateef, Max Roach, Maria Schneider and bassist Guillermo Edgehill. As a jazz ambassador, Mimi toured Africa, Europe, Russia, China, South and Central America, and the Caribbean for the U.S. State Department. Her vast work as a sidewoman includes gigs with Kenny Barron, Lizz Wright, Beyoncé, Dianne Reeves, Tia Fuller, Ingrid Jensen, Roy Hargrove, Dee Dee Bridgewater, Nona Hendricks, Marc Cary, Rachel Z, Sean Jones, Jason Moran, Ravi Coltrane, Ralph Peterson, and Terri Lyne Carrington's Grammy Award-winning Mosaic Project. Jones launched her own record label, Hot Tone Music, in 2009, which has produced nine albums thus far.
In addition, Mimi Jones co-directs with Arcoiris Sandoval the D.O.M.E. Experience, a multimedia project that is meant to inspire its audience to become aware of environmental and social issues, within the community and globally, by original compositions performed by a 20-piece jazz orchestra, dance and cinematography. This project has been awarded the following awards: New Music USA Award, Bronx Council on the Arts Award, C.E.R.N. (Citizens Emergency Response Network) Award, the Bronx Museum commission and residency, Casita Maria for Arts and Education Commission and Residency Puffin Foundation Award, Pregones Theater commission and residency, Shape Shifter commission and residency and Bronx Heritage Center commission and residency. Mimi also created an original mini-musical production about the Great Migration and Harlem Renaissance with a cast of seven entitled Next Stop Harlem.
Mimi Jones was voted a rising star by the DownBeat polls for 4 years straight, receiving the #1 Rising Star Award by the DownBeat polls in 2018. Mimi's article on beats and rhythm was featured in the DownBeat Magazine as part of the Woodshed section of the publication.
Pre-pandemic, Jones began developing a fresh original music project called The Black Madonna, featuring stringed instruments, percussion and voice, with hopes of recording new music later in early 2023.
Mimi Jones is a full-time professor at the Berklee School of Music in Boston, Mass. She has returned to Purchase University for the fourth year as part of the faculty for Carnegie Hall Foundation, and the NYO summer 2023 program led by Joanna Massey and Sean Jones. This prestigious program selects the best players in the nation from 16–19 years of age to experience a rigorous musical training, immediately followed by a performance at Carnegie Hall and an extravagant tour throughout Europe.
Mimi Jones has recorded and performed with: the American Opera Project, Between the World and Me (HBO special with Kamilah Forbes, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Jason Moran, Nate Smith, Ledisi, Common and Angela Bassett), the Leap Day Trio Live at the Bohemia Café including renowned drummer Matt Wilson and Jeff Lederer on sax, and Nite Bjuti, which was signed by Whirlwind Recordings in October 2022. The music industry was hit by storm on July 28, 2023, with the first album release of the group called Nite Bjuti. Improvising beats and layers of sound, they tell stories inspired by their Afro roots and culture: an electronica, avant-garde trio featuring Candice Hoyes on voice, Val Jeanty as sound chemist and Mimi Jones on bass.
The great drummer/producer/composer/innovator Terri Lyne Carrington published a book labeled as New Standards: 101 Lead Sheets by Women which includes one of Mimi's compositions entitled "One 4 JB" in October 2022. Jones continues to host her infamous "inclusive" weekly community jam session The Lab Session Jam and Jazz Party every Sunday at Room 623 NYC in Harlem, N.Y. Ms. Jones was listed as No. 1 in the Rising Star DownBeat polls in 2024.
A world of art under one roof. Performances that challenge, move and stay with you. And the breadth of creativity, yours to experience.
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