BLOOMINGTON — WFIU Public Radio and the Department of Jazz Studies at Indiana University Jacobs School of Music are partnering to co-host Swing in September, a free outdoor concert series featuring a variety of musical acts from swing bands to jazz vocalists and more.
The concerts will be held every Friday in September at 6:30 p.m. in Dunn Meadow on the Indiana University campus. In the event of rain, the concerts will be moved indoors to Recital Hall.
The Swing in September lineup includes:
- The B-Town Bearcats on September 1
- Soul Proprietors on September 8
- Descarga Five on September 15
- Sophie Faught on September 22
- Evan Taylor on September 29.
WFIU hosts Mark Chilla, David Brent Johnson, and William Morris will emcee the concerts.
Swing in September is made possible with support from presenting sponsor Greene & Schultz Trial Lawyers, supporting sponsor IU Credit Union Investment Services, and contributing sponsor Jackson Audio.
For more information about Swing in September, click here.
About the artists:
The B-Town Bearcats feature some of the best practitioners of traditional jazz in central Indiana. The Bearcats’ mission is to perform the music of the Golden Age of jazz (1900–1940) and to render it in an authentic and entertaining fashion. The band’s repertoire is selected from the works of Louis Armstrong, Jelly Roll Morton, Bix Beiderbecke, and many others. The instrumentation is the traditional Dixieland format: trumpet, trombone, clarinet, tuba, banjo, piano, vocalist, and drums. The B-Town Bearcats play the music that formed the backbone of America’s long and distinctive legacy of that music called jazz.
Soul Proprietors specialize in old-school, blues-oriented jazz trio music in the vein of Oscar Peterson, Ahmad Jamal, Monty Alexander, and others. The band members include Abhik Mazumder on piano, Alex Hoberty on bass, and Francis Bassett-Dilley on drums.
Descarga Five is an instrumental quintet composed of Indiana University students and faculty playing high-energy salsa and Latin jazz favorites, with Jamaal Baptiste on piano, Natalie Boeyink on bass, Ana Nelson on saxophone, and Joe Galvin on percussion.
Tenor saxophonist Sophie Faught is an improviser, composer, bandleader, and teacher. Raised up by some of Indiana’s great jazz musicians and educators – David Baker, Harry Miedema, Brent Walarab, and Claude Sifferlen – Faught speaks the jazz language with creativity, wit, passion, depth, and soul. Faught’s music is mindful of tradition without being held captive by it.
Throughout his career, Evan Taylor has supported artists such as Frankie Valli & The Four Seasons, Gloria Estefan, Delfeayo Marsalis & The Uptown Jazz Orchestra, Eric Darius, Nicole Henry, Kris Johnson Big Band, Justin Lee Schultz, and others across North America. Taylor frequently collaborates with industry producers to develop music for Netflix, HGTV, BET, and other television programs. He was signed to Warner Chappell Music as a recording artist in 2018.
