The award-winning Staples High School music department is proud to present a new community event highlighting America’s greatest contribution to the arts: JAZZ. This exciting evening of music will feature performances by ensembles from Staples High School, Ridgefield High School, and Bedford Middle School.
This year’s featured artist and clinician will be saxophonist and educator John Mastroianni, assistant professor of jazz studies at UCONN and the 2014 Connecticut Teacher of the Year and the UConn 2021 Undergraduate Faculty Mentor of the Year.
John is a saxophonist, woodwind doubler, composer, and arranger. He has performed, toured and/or recorded with artists such as Mel Lewis, the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra, Smokey Robinson, Jim McNeely, Jay Leonhart, Rufus Reid, Clint Holmes, Roger Kellaway, the Glenn Miller Band, Sonny Costanzo, Johnny Mathis, Aretha Franklin, Natalie Cole, Donna Summer, Tony Bennett, Barry Manilow to name just a few. In addition to being a free-lance musician, John performs with his own quartet and leads his own sixteen-piece jazz orchestra for whom he composes and arranges all of the music. he is an Assistant Professor in Residence of Jazz Studies at the University of Connecticut and the founder and music director of the Young Artists Summer Jazz Workshop.
Register to watch from home or in the Trefz Forum in the Library.
Jazz History 1890-1980
Jazz History 1980 - Present
History of Music
