UNK music professor, 308.865.8606 or paynej@unk.edu
University of Nebraska at Kearney Concerts-On-The-Platte
presents
PLATTE RIVER JAZZ
7:30 p.m., November 5, 2007
Fine Arts Building Recital Hall
Free & open to the public
PERSONNEL
Dr. James F. Payne, Professor of Music at the University of Nebraska at Kearney, leads Platte River Jazz, playing trumpet and keyboards and arranging the music for the sextet. With over one thousand public performances, he has been guest soloist with many bands and has performed on KOLN–KGIN TV and at numerous Nebraska Music Educator’s Conventions. He has played in numerous jazz combos and big bands for over forty years and directs the UNK Jazz Rock Ensemble.
Bonnie Payne, a graduate of the UNK Music Business Program and the wife of Dr. Payne, started playing electric bass in 1984. She has played in the UNK Jazz Rock Ensemble, and in numerous jazz combos and bands. At New Life Assembly church, she serves musically on electric bass and acoustic guitar, as a vocalist and as a sound technician. The Nebraska Walk To Emmaus movement appreciates her song leading at many of their gatherings. She is the Campus Events & Reservations coordinator at UNK.
Greg Tesdall, a graduate of the UNK Music Business Program, is a histotechnologist at Good Samaritan Hospital. Originally from Iowa, he performed in South Dakota and California, before settling in Nebraska where he has performed professionally for many years. He plays saxophones, flute, Irish flute and keyboard with many different groups: Wild Clover, Yikes!, Thalken-Tesdall-Thalken, Mainstreet and TASL.
Greg Sales, a graduate of the UNK Music Business Program, is manager of Yanda’s Music and Pro Audio in Kearney. He teaches guitar as an adjunct faculty member at UNK. He has played guitar since his high school days and has performed in the UNK Jazz Rock Ensemble as well as with The Untold, Snapshot and one of the most successful cover bands in Nebraska, Fear of Flying. He now leads a new band, The Innocence.
Spencer Hansen teaches music in the Lexington Public Schools after graduating from UNK with a Bachelor of Music—Music Business Emphasis and a Bachelor of Education—K-12 Music Specialization. He has played trumpet and keyboards with the UNK Jazz Rock Ensemble in addition to performing with Tenth Hour Calling, Westwind and The Innocence.
Mick Johnson graduated from UNK with a music business degree and now is the piano technician at UNK as well as Hastings College and Nebraska Wesleyan University. He has played drums in the UNK Jazz Rock Ensemble as well as a number of bands in Nebraska and Minneapolis: G-Wiz, The Mighty Jailbreakers, The Untold and one of the most successful cover bands in Nebraska, Fear of Flying.
PROGRAM
The concert will feature entertaining, easy-to-listen-to jazz from the 1920s to the 1990s, including styles like several types of Dixieland, swing, jazz fusion, bossa nova, jazz-rock, Latin rock, and rhythm & blues. The music to be performed comes from writers and performers like Louis Armstrong, Glenn Miller, Jazz Crusaders, Little River Band, Nat King Cole, Antonio Carlos Jobim, George Gershwin, Emil Deodato, Dave Weckl, Pat Metheny, Wes Montgomery, George Shearing and Donny Hathaway.
