DIVA Jazz Orchestra Celebrates 20th Anniversary at MPAC

On May 6, 1990, New York's Schubert Theater celebrated its 75th anniversary. Among the celebrities on hand were Dustin Hoffman, Mary Martin and Robert Goulet. Jazz drummer Sherrie Maricle was playing with the freelance pickup orchestra that performed that night, and one of the guest conductors was Stanley Kay, who once had managed bands led by the legendary drummer Buddy Rich. "Stanley liked the way I played," Maricle recalled, "and I certainly made a point to talk to him because I knew who he was from the Buddy Rich era."

Two years later, Kay called Maricle with an idea. "Hey," he asked her, "do you know other women who play as well as you?" In June 1992, the original audition for the DIVA Jazz Orchestra was held. "About 40 women came," Maricle said. "Our first concert was in March 1993."

On Sunday, April 14, the DIVA Jazz Orchestra will celebrate its 20th anniversary with a concert, sponsored by the New Jersey Jazz Society, at the Mayo Performing Arts Center in Morristown. Maricle will lead a 15-piece ensemble of versatile musicians, who just happen to be women. DIVA currently performs all over the world playing contemporary, mainstream big band jazz. In 2006, DIVA won Downbeat Magazine's Critics' and Readers' polls for best big band. The Jazz at Lincoln Center's website (www.jalc.org) describes DIVA as, "hard-charging, powerful, immersed in the history of their craft and in total command of their instruments." And The Washington Post says DIVA's music has "the vigor and complexity of the big time big bands."

The band's most recent album, Johnny Mandel: A Man and His Music (Arbors Records: 2011) was recorded live at Dizzy's Coca-Cola in New York City. Mandel conducted the band playing 13 of his arrangements including 10 of his own compositions such as "Emily" and "The Shadow of Your Smile". Ken Dryden, reviewing the album in AllMusic.com, wrote that DIVA played Mandel's charts "with the finesse of veterans who have played them night after night for years. The ensembles are flawless, and there are too many outstanding soloists to mention."

Stanley Kay died in 2010 at the age of 86. What he did with DIVA, Maricle believes, "really changed, in a dramatic way, the perception of women in jazz." Come see, hear and enjoy Stanley Kay's legacy at 3 p.m. on Sunday, April 14.