King Philip Middle School Jazz Band Alumni Series in Free Concert

For Immediate Release:

KING PHILIP MIDDLE SCHOOL JAZZ BAND ALUMNI SERIES

Featuring Very Special Guests

The Jimmy Macbride Trio

Jimmy Macbride, drums

Miki Yamanaka, keyboard

Adam Coté, bass

King Philip Middle School Jazz Band

Joseph Ganci, Director

Monday, June 4th, 2018 – 7:00 PM

Pond House Auditorium – Elizabeth Park, Hartford

Admission Free

Contact: joe_ganci@whps.org

The King Philip Middle School Jazz Band Series, now in its 12th year, brings world-renowned jazz musician alumni together with KP students in the joy of making music together. The master teachers will give a mini clinic at the King Philip Middle School, followed by a rehearsal with the students. The free concert at the Pond House, in Hartford’s Elizabeth Park, brings together these professionals with the students of King Philip Middle School’s jazz band in a joyous celebration of music making.

The professional musicians this year are:

Jimmy Macbride, an alumnus of the prestigious King Philip Jazz Band, is a drummer/composer based in NYC. He has performed with a wide variety of artists including Herbie Hancock, Terence Blanchard, Wynton Marsalis, Kenny Barron, Jimmy Greene, and Adam Rogers. Jimmy is a recent graduate of The Juilliard School, where he studied privately with Carl Allen, Billy Drummond and Kenny Washington. He is a regular performer throughout New York City, performing at such venues as Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola, Smalls, The Jazz Gallery, and The Blue Note. His musical talents have also taken him worldwide, touring across Europe, Asia, and North America. Jimmy has also appeared at some of the world’s most famous venues, including the Monterey Jazz Festival, North Sea Jazz Festival, and Newport Jazz Festival, among others. He performs regularly with different groups including Nir Felder, Samora Pinderhughes’ Transformations Suite, Lucas Pino’s Nonet, Nick Finzer's Hear & Now, and the Roxy Coss Quintet. In addition, he can be seen playing with many of New York’s most creative and forward-thinking artists, including Lage Lund, Melissa Aldana, Ben Street, Kevin Hays, Fabian Almazan, Matt Brewer, Michael Rodriguez, and Dayna Stephens, among many others. He is also an active recording artist, appearing on over 20 albums to date. Jimmy is featured in the "Up & Coming" section of the June 2018 issue of Modern Drummer Magazine. In addition, the Roxy Coss Quintet, of which Jimmy is a member, recently won the inaugural Emerging Artists Project Grant sponsored by the Local 802 American Federation of Musicians union in NYC. The group received a $40,000 award designed to help further them through promotion, touring, etc., as well as to help provide a better living wage for the musicians when performing.

Jimmy’s website is: jimmymacbride.com

Miki Yamanaka is a New York-based pianist from Kobe, Japan. She moved to NYC in 2012 and has studied piano with Jason Lindner, Jeb Patton, and Fred Hersch, and organ with Sam Yahel and Larry Goldings. In 2015 she was one of three pianists selected to participate in “Betty Carter’s Jazz Ahead”, an intensive composition residency at the Kennedy Center. She recently earned her Master of Music degree from Queens College, receiving the Sir Roland Hanna Award. Miki has appeared in concert with many notable musicians including Steve Nelson, Seamus Blake, Victor Lewis, Antonio Hart and Peter Bernstein. She holds weekly residencies at Smalls and Mezzrow Jazz Clubs in NYC, and hosted a week-long tribute to Horace Silver in 2016 and presented her own music in 2017 at Dizzy’s Club Coca Cola. Miki is also a recipient of the Emerging Artists Project Grant sponsored by the Local 802 American Federation of Musicians union in NYC along with Jimmy. She is the current pianist in the Philip Harper Quintet, and the Roxy Coss Quintet. Miki recorded a mini album called "Songs Without Lyrics" in 2012, and has just recorded a brand new album with Steve Nelson, Orlando le Fleming, and Bill Stewart, which will be released in 2018.

Miki’s website is: www.mikiyamanaka.com

Adam Coté, inspired by his father’s record collection and by the prospect of being in his older brother’s band, began playing bass guitar when he was thirteen years old. After hearing “Moment’s Notice” from John Coltrane’s album Blue Train, he started to study jazz. A few years later, Adam was drawn to the double bass and was a student of the renowned bassist Nat Reeves at the Hartt School. In the fall of 2009, Coté was selected as a semi-finalist in the prestigious Thelonious Monk Competition. He has been based in the New York City area for the past ten years. Among his performance credits are George Coleman, Philip Harper, Jason Moran, Kevin Hays, Ian Hendrickson-Smith, Steve Davis, Rodney Green, Joe Cohn, Billy Drummond and others.

For Further Information, please contact: Joe Ganci at joe_ganci@whps.org