Pianist Benny Green to play with NSU Jazz Band on Sunday at Jazz Depot
BY JENNIFER CHANCELLOR World Scene Writer
Thursday, November 01, 2012
11/01/12 at 4:35 AM
Jazz pianist Benny Green will join the Northeastern State University Jazz Band for a concert at 5 p.m. Sunday at the Jazz Depot inside the Oklahoma Jazz Hall of Fame.
Tickets for the all-ages show start at $15 and are available at tulsaworld.com/jazzhalltix, at the venue and by calling Bettie Downing at 918-281-8609. Student and senior discounts available.
The musician honed his craft at a young age, and NSU Director of Jazz Studies Tommy Poole has called him "kind of the Doogie Howser of jazz piano."
As an adult, he's worked with acts such as Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers, Freddie Hubbard, Ray Brown and Diana Krall, as well as leading his own bands.
Green has developed a reputation as a leading light in the jazz style known as hard bop, defined, in part, as a more blues-influenced form of bebop.
Poole explains it like this: "What hard bop did was get back to some of the blues origins of jazz music."
"What bebop musicians like Charlie Parker did was take jazz music and make it a lot denser - a lot more chords, a lot more notes," Green says on his website. "It was more intellectual music."
On Sunday, Green will join the 19 members of NSU's Jazz Ensemble at Jazz Depot, 111 E. First St. The NSU Jazz Ensemble recently released its sixth album, "On Cue."
Original Print Headline: Pianist Benny Green to play with NSU jazz band
Jennifer Chancellor 918-581-8346
jennifer.chancellor@tulsaworld.com
