The arts center announced the formation of a resident jazz ensemble — and revealed a roster of related educational activities — at a press event in January. Among the speakers were arts center President and CEO Kathy Ramsberger (left), and Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer (right). Whitaker (center) discussed his artistic vision for the group, which played its first official gig in April with Broadway star Bernadette Peters. entral Florida jazz fans now have something to really get jazzed about. The Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts has launched a 19-piece resident jazz ensemble under the artistic direction of internationally renowned bassist Rodney Whitaker, a performer and educator who leads the arts center’s Jazz Music Intensive Week each summer. “The jazz scene in the Orlando area is great,” says Whitaker, who records for Detroit-based Mack Avenue and is a distinguished professor of jazz bass and director of jazz studies at Michigan State University’s College of Music. “It’s full of promise More so now than ever, with the debut of �������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� ���������������� �������� �������� ������ ������������ ���������������� �������� ����������- way star Bernadette Peters, who performed at the Walt Disney Theater as part of the Morgan Stanley Moments at Dr. Phillips Cen- ������������������������������������������������������������������������������Ellington for Lovers, will be at the Alexis & Jim Pugh Theater on June 3 at 8 p.m. Tickets are $35. Formation of the orchestra — and the array of exciting educational opportunities ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ kind partnership between the arts center and Jazz at Lincoln Center, a multifaceted program based at the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York. The artistic director for Jazz at Lincoln Center is Pulitzer Prize-winning trumpeter, composer and arranger Wynton Marsalis, with whom Whitaker performed as a member of the Wynton Marsalis Septet and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra in the mid-1990s. Marsalis has donated his personal arrangements to seed the arts center’s music library. 12 artsLife | SUMMER 2017 ALL ABOUT OUTREACH Like most everything else the arts center does, formation of the orchestra is, at its core, all about community outreach and exposing young people to the transformative power of the arts. Eventually, 18,500 public-school sixth-graders from Orange and Osceola counties will visit the downtown campus for a curriculumbased jazz experience performed by the orchestra. Coming next semester is “WeBop,” a jazz education program for tots. And next year “Essentially Ellington,” a jazz-education program for high schoolers, will be offered. (That’s Duke Ellington, of course.) The program for sixth-graders, dubbed “6th & Jazz,” will debut in the next academic year. Music will be used to enhance instruction about civil rights issues, which is appropriate since jazz — which has been called “America’s classical music” — can be traced to African-American musicians in New Orleans in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. and potential.” C
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