NORTHAMPTON — Pioneer Valley’s longest-running community jazz vocal ensemble, the Valley Jazz Voices, is presenting its Winter Concert at the BOMBYX Center for Arts & Equity on Jan. 10.
The 3 p.m. program will feature selections from the Great American Songbook organized around themes of the sun, the moon, the weather and love, all arranged and sung in the group’s signature four-part jazz harmonies. Singers will be accompanied by a jazz trio led by pianist Dylan Walter, with Wes Brown on bass and Dillon Pinard on drums.
Directed by Jeff Olmsted and founded in 2014, Valley Jazz Voices performs swing, bebop, cool, Brazilian and pop-inspired jazz arrangements, and highlights local vocal talent and community musicianship. Based in Northampton, the group is the largest community jazz vocal ensemble in Western Mass.
“It’s a combination of mostly Great American Songbook classics,” said Olmsted. “If you’re a jazz person at all, you’re probably going to be familiar with at least half the songs we do at the concert. Then we do some other [genres] — I like to hear pop songs arranged as jazz tunes. Folks are not expecting to hear “Light my Fire.”
The concert is a family-friendly matinee offering familiar standards presented with fresh arrangements and warm ensemble sound. Tickets are $20 in advance or at the door, and children under 12 are free.
Olmsted is now in his 10th year as director for the Valley Jazz Voices and said this upcoming Winter Show will be more of what the public has come to love and expect from the group. He said there will also be some new arrangements throughout this year’s concert event.
“The Great American Songbook I would say is kind of always our theme. That’s the deepest well that we’re always drawing from,” Olmstead said. “For instance, we’re starting with a song by Harold Arlin, who wrote “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.” Then we go into a song by the Gershwin brothers,” explained Olmsted.
The concert will also feature performances of classics, like “Moonlight in Vermont” and “What is This Thing Called Love,” as well as some less familiar arrangements. Solo performances will also occur throughout the afternoon and as a closing number, Olmsted will lead a jazz reharmonization of “Auld Lang Syne.”
“As far as planning a concert, I think about variety, about wanting to change things up, basically. Every song should have a new vibe somehow or another. It’s not exactly telling a story in a concert, but it does have something in common with plotting the thing out, what happens next, what will follow this,” added Olmsted. “In this case, the songs are all so good that I know if we sing them well ,the show is going to be a hit.”
Olmsted said he was eager for the group’s first concert inside the Bombyx Center, adding the center and Director Cassandra Holden were “a real gift to the community.”
“Bombyx is the best sort of performance ready space that we’ve gone into. They’re set up for what is not the easiest thing to amplify basically, but I’m counting on them to do the great job they always do of helping us sound as good as we can,” said Olmsted.
Olmsted added the group is performing as great as ever and hopes the public makes it out for an afternoon of music and joy. He said the event is a reminder of how powerful music can be.
“I was reminded recently of something that Leonard Berstein said in response to the violence of the [19]60s and [19]70s. He said, as musicians, ‘This will be our reply to violence: to make music more intensely, more beautifully, more devotedly than ever before,’” Olmstead said. “What I particularly like about that is he says, ‘a reply to violence.’ So, in my opinion, we live in pretty dark times and we’re surrounded by violence. The way I hold it is that music is resistance. And happiness is resistance. So, this is happy-making music. That’s why I want to keep doing this.”
For tickets and more information about the show, visit bombyx.live/events/valley-jazz-voices-winter-concert/.
