Winterlude Jazz Festival

Live performances include Lynn Zimmer and Friends, Eddie Moore, Doug Talley Quartet, Ensemble Ibérica, and the Deborah Brown Quartet. These leaders in Kansas City jazz will lead up to the festival’s headliner, Jazz at Lincoln Center PRESENTS: “New Orleans Songbook!”

Schedule

Saturday, February 15

• 1 p.m. Lynn Zimmer and Friends featuring pop music from the 1930s
• 2 p.m. Eddie Moore
• 3 p.m. JCCC Jazz Ensemble (led by Ryan Heinlein)
• 4 p.m. Guest Lecture by Libby Hanssen
• 7:30 p.m. Deborah Brown Quartet – “My Journey”

Sunday, February 16

• 1 p.m. Doug Talley Quartet featuring the music of Cole Porter
• 2 p.m. Guest lecture by Chuck Haddix
• 3 p.m. School group selected via submission and evaluation by JCCC music faculty (group to be announced in late fall)
• 4 p.m. Ensemble Ibérica Quartet featuring jazz of Spain, South America, and Turkey
• 7 p.m. Jazz at Lincoln Center PRESENTS: “New Orleans Songbook”

Bios

Lynn Zimmer and Friends

Jazz clarinetist Lynn Zimmer and his group play the music of early New Orleans jazz, plus many wonderful standards from the 1930s and '40s – the music of the “Great American Songbook.” Most recently, Zimmer and his group played at Dick Hawk's Gaslight Grill in Leawood for 11 consecutive years—five nights every week. Zimmer is the clarinetist with Kansas City's own New Red Onion Jazz Babies and the KC Dixieland Band.

Prior to that, he worked and toured with the famed Swing Era bandleader Clyde McCoy, Turk Murphy’s Jazz Band in San Francisco, and Grammy Award-winning trumpeter Al Hirt in New Orleans. Along the way, he had the pleasure of playing many live performances with Nashville saxophonist/recording artist Boots Randolph.

Each member of the quartet has impressive credentials and decades of experience performing in Kansas City and across the country. Enjoy them as they perform the music of this Golden Era—from gentle, easy-listening tunes to blues, jazz, and swing!

Eddie Moore

Eddie Moore is a keyboardist whose music and creativity runs deep through his veins. He began his musical journey in Houston’s Third Ward, an area credited with some of the deepest roots in Black American Music. Moore earned a bachelor’s degree from Texas Southern University and a master’s in jazz studies from UMKC. He is also a Jazz Lecturer at the University of Kansas. Moore has been credited as “Pulling Kansas City Jazz into the Future.” His music incorporates a myriad of styles, including R&B, Hip Hop, Neo Soul, and Rock all filtered through jazz. He seeks to share the common human experiences of love, loss, joy, and perseverance with every composition. Houston has produced some of the most innovative jazz musicians of the culture, whereas Kansas City has always been home to a more traditional sound. Join Eddie Moore in this transcendental journey of jazz.

JCCC Jazz Ensemble directed by Ryan Heinlein

Under the JCCC Music Department and the direction of Ryan Heinlein, the JCCC Jazz Band performs several free concerts throughout the year. Students also play at events around the metro area and participate in educational opportunities to play with professional musicians such as the Kansas City Jazz Orchestra and Hanover Big Band. They've also participated in master classes with saxophonist Benny Golson, trumpeter Roger Ingram, saxophonist Jaleel Shaw and trumpeter and composer Sean Jones. In 2023, they played at the Jazz Education Network conference in Orlando.

Dr. Ryan Heinlein is an Associate Professor of Music and Chair of the Music, Theater and Record Arts department at Johnson County Community College where he conducts the jazz and concert bands. He holds degrees in trombone performance from Wichita State University and the Conservatory of Music and Dance at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. Ryan serves as the jazz education advisor to the Kansas Music Educators Association and is a highly sought after adjudicator and clinician.

Ryan remains an active performer around the Midwest. His versatility has allowed him to play with groups such as the Kansas City Jazz Orchestra, the Marcus Lewis Big Band, The Northland Symphony, Michael Feinstein, the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra, the Harry James Orchestra, the Buckinghams, the Four Tops, Making Movies, Ana Popovich, and Frankie Negron. Ryan is a Conn-Selmer endorsing artist.

Libby Hanssen

Originally from Indiana, Libby Hanssen is a writer based in Kansas. She is the author of States of Swing: The History of the Kansas City Jazz Orchestra, 2003-2023, and has written for KCUR 89.3 FM, 91.9 Classical KC, KC Studio, The Kansas City Star, The Pitch, and other publications. She earned degrees in trombone performance from Ball State University and UMKC Conservatory, with additional studies at Indiana University Jacob School of Music. She was also a Fellow for the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) Arts Journalism Institute at Columbia University. Libby maintains the culture blog Proust Eats a Sandwich.

Deborah Brown Quartet

Deborah Brown has been an artist since 1972. You can only imagine all the places she’s been, people she’s met, and experiences she’s had. For this performance, she’ll share her story of well-known jazz artists, her brief encounter with Michael Jackson, a dinner with Quincy Jones, and an evening with Mel Tormé. In between stories, the music of the American songbook will be featured with visiting Portland pianist George Colligan, who has recorded with Brown in New York (Songbird), bassist Ben Liefer, and drummer John Kizilarmut.

Since the early '90s, Colligan has worked with heavyweights of the genre such as Lee Konitz, Benny Golson, Buster Williams, Michael Brecker, John Scofield, Linda May Han Oh, and Jack DeJohnette, amongst many others. Liefer, a favorite artist in Kansas City, has been on the A-list and the first to receive a call for an engagement. Kizilarmut performs regularly with the Kansas City Jazz Orchestra and has released a recent recording at The Green Mill in Chicago.

Doug Talley Quartet

Doug Talley has performed with such jazz luminaries as Jay McShann, Clark Terry, Bob Mintzer, Claude “Fiddler” Williams, Dizzy Gillespie, Bobby Watson, Karrin Allyson, Byron Stripling, Ignacio Berroa, Ken Peplowski, Randy Brecker, Sean Jones, Scott Robinson, Gary Foster, and Wycliffe Gordon, among many others, and is a founding member of the Kansas City Jazz Orchestra. He is a familiar face throughout the Midwest as a jazz performer and educator, including many performances nationally and internationally.

Talley is a graduate of the University of Kansas and the University of North Texas. He is a recipient of the Kansas Governor’s Arts Award and the 2009 Johnson County Library Pinnacle Award for arts in education. His discography includes four recordings on the Sea Breeze label with the Trilogy and Boulevard Big Bands and five recordings with his own quartet, which includes “Night and Day: Musings on the Cole Porter Songbook.”

Cole Porter (1891 - 1964) was an American composer and songwriter credited with over 800 compositions. Many of his songs became American popular song standards noted for their witty, urbane lyrics, and many of his scores found success on Broadway and in Hollywood films. Unlike many of his Tin Pan Alley colleagues, Porter wrote both the music and lyrics on most of his songs.

Chuck Haddix

Chuck Haddix is the curator of the Marr Sound Archives, a collection of 450,000 historic sound recordings housed in the Miller Nichols Library at the University of Missouri--Kansas City. Haddix hosts the “Fish Fry,” a popular radio program featuring the finest in Americana, blues, soul, rhythm and blues, jumpin’ jive, and zydeco on Friday and Saturday nights from 8 p.m. to midnight on kcur.org FM 89.3, Kansas City’s public radio station. Haddix also teaches Kansas City jazz history at the Kansas City Art Institute.

Over the years, Haddix has contributed to a wide variety of theatrical, recording, video, and film projects, including “Cronkite Remembers,” a biography of Walter Cronkite, Robert Altman's “Kansas City,” and Merchant-Ivory's “Mr. and Mrs. Bridge.” His articles have appeared in Down Beat, Living Blues Magazine, and The New Grove Dictionary of American Music. In 2005, he coauthored with Frank Driggs “Kansas City Jazz: From Ragtime to Bebop–A History” for Oxford University Press. In 2013, the University of Illinois Press published his biography of Charlie “Bird” Parker entitled “Bird: The Life and Music of Charlie Parker.” In 2018, he contributed a chapter on the Coon-Sanders Nighthawk Orchestra to “Wide-Open Town: Kansas City in the Pendergast Era,” an anthology of Kansas City history published by the University Press of Kansas.

Ensemble Ibérica

Beau Bledsoe performs and records classical music, jazz, and folkloric music from around the world, seeking to integrate different musical cultures with new audiences. His interest in exploring new repertoire, cultures, and programming ideas has led to the creation of a large body of arrangements, transcriptions, and compositions for solo guitar and chamber music.

Bledsoe has worked extensively with the Guthrie Theater of Minneapolis, the Bach Aria Soloists, Owen/Cox Dance Group, and the Kansas City Ballet. He is the founder and director of the Turkish jazz ensemble Alaturka and the independent record label Tzigane, which is home to 20 of Bledsoe’s recorded projects and many other fine artists.

In 2014, he founded Ensemble Ibérica, a group that performs the music of Ibéria (Spain and Portugal) and the colonial Americas, while educating the public about Iberian cultural influence. In May 2023, Ensemble Ibérica performed at Carnegie Hall to a sold-out audience.

Through his many diverse projects and ensembles, Bledsoe has had the great fortune of performing in almost every state in the country. Additionally, he has toured extensively in Mexico, Argentina, Portugal, Spain, Germany, France, Ireland, Switzerland, Turkey, and Russia. His recording, “Yalnız by Alaturka,” received 4.5 stars and was named one of the Best Albums of 2013 by Downbeat Magazine.

Jazz at Lincoln Center PRESENTS: “New Orleans Songbook”

Jazz at Lincoln Center PRESENTS brings the soul of New Orleans and the spirit of Mardi Gras to this amazing evening, celebrating the composers and inspired songs of the Crescent City, the historic epicenter of jazz. From Jelly Roll Morton and Louis Armstrong to Ellis Marsalis and James Black, New Orleans has long been an apex of innovation and inspiration. Led by pianist Luther S. Allison and vocalists Quiana Lynell and Milton Suggs, “New Orleans Songbook” immerses audiences in the captivating and timeless spirit of this vibrant city.

For over three decades, Jazz at Lincoln Center has been a leading advocate for jazz, culture, and arts education globally. Under the direction of Wynton Marsalis, Jazz at Lincoln Center has brought the art form of jazz from the heart of New York City to over 446 cities in more than 40 countries.

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