Jazz Ensemble and OPUS Team Up for Concert Oct. 29

Come celebrate Halloween with hot jazz and spooky Broadway tunes as The University of Tampa Jazz Ensemble and OPUS team up for a concert on Monday, Oct. 29. The concert, which is free and open to the public, begins at 7:30 p.m. in Falk Theatre on the UT campus.

The UT Jazz Ensemble, a 19-piece traditional big band made up of UT students who are both music majors and non-majors, will open the concert with music from composer Sammy Nestico. Selections include the up-tempo “Wind Machine” as well as the ballad “Samantha,” featuring lead alto saxophone player Je’Coy Hawley, a freshman nursing major.

The ensemble will play several Cuban pieces to promote the National Symphony Orchestra of Cuba’s visit to Tampa Bay in early November. The group will perform Mario Bauza’s “Cubauza” and Duke Ellington’s “Moon Over Cuba,” featuring freshman forensic science major Justin Santiago on trombone.

The Jazz Ensemble will also perform two pieces featuring vocalists from OPUS — “Orange Colored Sky,” popularized by Nat King Cole, featuring senior music major Gregg Aponte, and an arrangement of Antonio Carlos Jobim’s “How Insensitive,” recently popularized by Diana Krall, featuring senior performing arts major Rhiannon Crawford.

The Halloween-themed second half of the concert will feature OPUS, a 16-voice auditioned ensemble of mixed voices that primarily performs Broadway and popular repertoire. The set includes standards such as “That Old Black Magic,” and Broadway numbers like “Hold Me Bat Boy” from Bat Boy: The Musical, and “All I Ask of You” from Phantom of the Opera. The OPUS ladies will go trick-or-treating as the Disney princesses while the gentlemen boogie to “The Monster Mash.”

For more information, contact Aric Brian, jazz band director, at abrian@ut.edu, or Tara Swartzbaugh, director of OPUS, at tswartzbaugh@ut.edu.