A group of West Virginia University School of Music alumni will be back on campus for an alumni jazz concert October 15.
Scott Green, Chris Tanner and Brian Wolfe will perform the free concert at 4 p.m. in the Gladys G. Davis Theatre, the same hall they performed student recitals in many years ago. They will be assisted on piano by James Miltenberger, professor emeritus.
Green teaches music at Third Ward Elementary School in Elkins and is on the adjunct faculty of West Virginia Wesleyan College. His received his DMA in composition (D.M.A., WVU 1981) and woodwinds at WVU in 1981. He is music director, accompanist and composer for the Old Brick Apprentice program in Elkins, a church organist and has been bassist with the Miltenberger Jazz Quartet for over 30 years.
Tanner, a 2000 WVU graduate, serves as Interim Chair of the Department of Music at Miami University and is the founder and director of the Miami University Steel Band. He is the author of The Steel Band Game Plan: Strategies for Starting, Building and Maintaining Your Pan Program, a comprehensive resource covering all fundamental topics relating to the development of a steel band program, and the first of its kind to be published through a major firm. In 2011 he released his debut recording of original music for steel band and jazz soloists, titled First Impression. He has served as a guest clinician or performing artist at numerous festivals, workshops, high schools and universities. He is a frequently commissioned composer/arranger, and his works are published through Pan Ramajay Productions, Engine Room Publishing, and Panyard, Inc.
A Clarksburg native, Wolfe has played drums nearly his entire life and graduated from WVU with a degree in percussion performance in 1996. He then went to Ghana to study drumming. Wolfe moved to New York City in 1991 to be closer to gigs and recording opportunities, and found an opportunity as the touring drummer for Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings. Wolfe serves as a part-time lecturer in WVU’s School of Music.
The concert will be repeated at Miami University later in the week.
“The goal of the concert is to give current students at each school the opportunity to hear successful alumni performing jazz,” Miltenberger said. “Successful alumni are some of our greatest assets serving as role models for our current students.”