By Matt Micucci
The MSM (Manhattan School of Music) Concert Jazz Band, will be paying tribute to Herbie Hancock’s seminal Blue Note Records album Maiden Voyage with a performance at the MSM Borden Auditorium on Thursday, Oct 22, 7:30 pm.
The event marks the celebration of Maiden Voyage‘s 50th anniversary.
Justin DiCioccio, internationally recognized as one of the foremost jazz educators of our time, will be directing the band. In January 2001, DiCioccio was inducted in the Jazz Education Hall of fame, and is currently Associate Dean of the Jazz Arts Program at the Manhattan School of Music.
Maiden Voyage was released on May 17, 1965 for Blue Note Records, and was the fifth album led by the great jazz musician Herbie Hancock, who was only 24 years old at the time. It is a concept album aimed at recreating an oceanic atmosphere. The title track, along with The Eye of the Hurricane and Dolphin Dance also featured in the album, have now become jazz standards.
Hancock himself has a brief career as a composition student at the Manhattan School of Music in the spring semester of 1962, not long before he went on to join Miles Davis in the most legendary incarnation of his quintet.
The concert on Oct 22 will feature Hancock’s classic compositions in a big band setting, with arrangements by MSM Jazz Arts Faculty Mike Holober and Tony Kosleck (BM ’89), and MSM alumni Jay Brandford (MM ’93) and Pete McGuinness (MM ’87).
The Manhattan School of Music Concert Jazz Band one of the MSM Jazz Arts Program’s top-tier big bands, performs two concerts a year in MSM’s Borden Auditorium; the ensemble also plays regularly at Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola and other venues. It is dedicated to performing the classic big band arrangements of Count Basie, Benny Goodman, Tadd Dameron, and many others, as well as performing contemporary works and styles.