Campus Connection

[caption id="attachment_32951" align="alignright" width="177"] UW-L Music Professor Greg Balfany, who is retiring, will be featured in the UW-L Jazz Ensembles I concert Sunday, April 27.[/caption]

Concert is part of Jazz Appreciation Month

The UW-L Jazz Studies Program will highlight a person area jazz lovers have appreciated for half a century. Greg Balfany, who retires this spring as a UW-L music professor after 35 years, will be featured as a saxophone soloist during an upcoming concert as part of Jazz Appreciation Month. The program’s final big band concert of the academic year is at 3 p.m. Sunday, April 27, in Valhalla, Cartwright Center-Gunning Addition. Admission is free. Jazz Ensemble I will perform five contemporary jazz and Latin jazz selections. Roland Vazquez’s “Sevilla” will feature many soloists in the ensemble along with an expanded percussion section. Jon Meier, senior guitarist, will be featured in David Von Kampen’s creative interpretation of Kurt Rowsenwinkle’s “Heavenly Bodies.” Seniors Luke Thering, piano, and Jordan Fay, tenor saxophone, will be the soloists in The Basie selection “Pressure Cooker.” Junior trumpeter Jimmy Jewson and senior bassist Alden Hedges will be featured on “Basso Urnesto”, a composition by University of Northern Iowa Jazz Director, Bob Washut. The highlight of Jazz Ensemble I’s set will be Balfany’s performance of “Beautiful Friendship.” Balfany is retiring after more than three decades as Director of Jazz Studies at UW-L. The La Crosse native performed locally during high school before he left to earn a bachelor’s at the University of Idaho and a master’s at the University of New Hampshire. He returned home to begin teaching at UW-L in 1979. He earned a doctorate at UW-Madison in 1988. The following year, he began his first stint as chair of the Music Department, which he held until 1998. He also served as chair from 2006-11. Balfany has directed the popular Gertrude Salzer-Gordon Jazz in the Park series since 1980, and has been director of the La Crosse Jazz Orchestra for 25 years. Balfany turned the direction of the university’s Jazz Ensemble I over to Karyn Quinn at the beginning of this academic year. Jazz Ensemble II will also perform a variety of jazz favorites during the concert. Jazz Ensemble II is directed by Scott Bean.

If you go —

Who: UW-L Jazz Ensembles I & II What: Concert When: 3 p.m. Sunday, April 27 Where: Valhalla, UW-L Cartwright Center-Gunning Addition Admission: Free