The Department of Music of Indiana University of Pennsylvania will present the 21st annual IUP Jazz Festival on Saturday, May 1, in Fisher Auditorium in the Performing Arts Center on the IUP campus. The Festival begins at 7:00 p.m. and is free and open to IUP faculty and students only, due to COVID-19 restrictions. The recital will also be live- streamed on YouTube.
Featured will be the IUP Jazz Band and the IUP Jazz Ensemble. The guest artist for the concert is IUP Assistant Professor of Saxophone James Flowers. Both the IUP Jazz Band and the IUP Jazz Ensemble are directed by Kevin Eisensmith, professor of Trumpet.
Flowers holds a doctorate of musical arts in saxophone performance and literature from the Eastman School of Music in addition to a master's in music performance from Bowling Green State University and a bachelor's in music education from Youngstown State University. Flowers has won first prize at the Music Teacher's National Association Chamber Music Competition, the Coleman National Chamber Music Competition, and was a finalist at the North American Saxophone Alliance National Conference Solo Competition.
Flowers has presented various programs at the North American Saxophone Alliance national and regional conferences, the World Saxophone Congress, the Navy Band Saxophone Symposium, the Heidelberg New Music Festival, and the International Villa-Lobos Festival. He has toured with the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra and performed with the Cleveland Duo, Wayne Newton, Marie Osmond, Bobby Vinton, Ben Vereen, Mary Wilson from the Supremes, Martha and the Vandellas, the Fifth Dimension, Al Martino, Deana Martin, Cleveland Fats, the Carmen Mico Orchestra, North Side Jazz, and the jazz trio Stretch. He also is a member of the Greenville Symphony and Bridges Saxophone Quartet. His principal saxophone teachers include Fred Boles, James Umble, Marco Albonetti, John Sampen, Ramon Ricker, Charles Pillow, and Chien-Kwan Lin. Flowers has also studied clarinet with Debbie Alexander, Robert Fitzer, and Kent Engelhardt and flute with Jacqueline Arrington.
For more information about these and other events sponsored by the IUP Music Department, please call 724-357-2390 or visit the IUP Department of Music website.