The third annual Jazz Festival at Yale — a student-organized celebration of jazz sponsored by the Yale Undergraduate Jazz Collective — will take place Friday-Sunday, Feb. 20-22.
This year, the festival will feature Takuya Kuroda, a critically acclaimed trumpeter, as well as four Yale alumni: soprano saxophonist Jane Ira Bloom and bassist, composer Mark Helias, saxophonist and educator Matthew Clayton, and pianist Brandon Smith. The concerts and talks associated with the festival are open to the public and free of charge. No tickets required.
The festival events will include:
- The Matthew Clayton Quartet featuring Brandon Smith at 8 p.m. on Friday in the Saybrook Underbrook Theater, 242 Elm St.
- Kuroda performing at 4 p.m. on Saturday in Sudler Hall, William L. Harkness Hall (WLH), 100 Wall St.
- The Jane Ira Bloom Quartet featuring Helias at 6 p.m. on Saturday in Sudler Hall, WLH, 100 Wall St.
- The Joshua Bruneau Septet at 8 p.m. on Saturday at the 9th Note, 56 Orange St., a local jazz club and one of the sponsors of the festival.
- Bloom and Helias in conversation at 11 a.m. on Sunday in Rm. 119, WLH, 100 Wall St.
- Jonathan Holloway, dean of Yale College, will speak on the history of jazz at noon on Sunday in Rm. 119, WLH, 100 Wall St.
- Stephen Crump’s Rosetta Trio at 3 p.m. on Sunday in the Yale University Art Gallery, 1111 Chapel St.
Yale College alumnus Matthew Clayton
Yale Undergraduate Jazz Collective “serves as the hub of Yale’s jazz community, and encourages and facilitates the formation of new student jazz ensembles,” note the members, adding, “We seek to promote a community of music education and exposure on and beyond Yale’s campus, and lobby for a formal jazz curriculum at Yale.”
Newspeak, one of the groups in the Yale Undergraduate Jazz Collective, recently released an album titled “Machinery of Night” which was produced by 11-time Grammy-winning recording engineer Jack Renner.