Jelly and GeorgefeaturingAaron Diehl / Piano and Music Director Adam Birnbaum / PianoCécile McLorin Salvant / Vocals

withEvan Christopher / Clarinet Corey Wilcox / Trombone Riley Mulherkar / Trumpet Paul Sikivie / Bass Lawrence Leathers / Drums Sunday Afternoon, February 19, 2017 at 4:00 Michigan Theater Ann Arbor

40th Performance of the 138th Annual Season 23rd Annual Jazz Series

This afternoon's presenting sponsors are Richard and Norma Sarns and Toyota.

This afternoon's supporting sponsors are Gary Boren and Stout Systems.

Funded in part by JazzNet Endowment Fund at UMS.

Media partnership provided by Ann Arbor’s 107one and WEMU 89.1 FM.

Jelly and George appears by arrangement with The Kurland Agency.

In consideration of the artists and the audience, please refrain from the use of electronic devices during the performance.

The photography, sound recording, or videotaping of this performance is prohibited.

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P R O G R A M

This afternoon's program will be announced from the stage by the artists and will be performed without intermission.

Jelly and George will highlight each composer’s genius, but also reveal the significant similarities in their broad range of influences. Although George Gershwin and Jelly Roll Morton did not know each other, the show is programmed as if they did, with interactions between the two pianos on stage symbolizing this mythological dialogue. 

Photo (next spread): Cécile McLorin Salvant; photographer: Mark Fitton.

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STOUTS Y S T E M S

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A R T I S T S

Pianist, composer, and bandleader Aaron Diehl is a dynamic, virtuosic, and versatile artist. He is one of the most sought-after musicians of his generation, as evidenced by his critically acclaimed performances, collaborations, and compositions across multiple disciplines. A Steinway artist, Mr. Diehl is a 2007 graduate of The Juilliard School, the American Pianists Association’s 2011 Cole Porter Fellow, and a Monterey Jazz Festival Commission Artist. He recently performed George Gershwin’s Concerto in F with the New York Philharmonic in September 2016. His work on Cécile McLorin Salvant’s For One To Love garnered him a Grammy Award, and his latest album, Space, Time, Continuum (on Detroit's Mack Avenue Records label), emphasizes artistic interactions between generations. Aside from leading his own ensembles, Mr. Diehl has amassed an impressive list of musical accomplishments, including serving as the music director for Cécile McLorin Salvant, collaborating with Philip Glass on his complete piano études, and scoring Jeremy McQueen’s ballet The Black Iris Project.

Adam Birnbaum is emerging as one of the top young voices in jazz piano. Since moving to New York from his native Boston in 2001, Mr. Birnbaum has become a top-call pianist working with a variety of ensembles and artists, including Al Foster, Greg Osby, Wallace Roney, Eddie Henderson, Eddie Gomez, The Vanguard Jazz Orchestra, and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, and has appeared as a sideman on more than 15 albums.

Mr. Birnbaum has also been recognized as a bandleader and composer, having released four albums of his own, completed commissions for Chamber Music America, and unique arrangements of Debussy and

Japanese folk songs for performance at the Chelsea Music Festival. Mr. Birnbaum’s recent release, Three of a Mind, was hailed as “an eloquent dispatch from the heart of the contemporary piano trio tradition” by The New York Times, and received a four-star review in Downbeat magazine.

Cécile McLorin Salvant grew up in a bilingual household in Miami, the child of a French mother and Haitian father. She started piano studies at age five, and at eight began singing with the Miami Choral Society. After graduating high school, Ms. McLorin Salvant decided to pursue her education in Aix-en-Provence in the south of France. In this unlikely setting, she embarked on a new career as a jazz performer, while pursuing a degree in French law and her training as a classical and baroque singer.

Her 2016 Grammy Award-winning album For One To Love may be the defining jazz statement on romance in the new millennium, a heartfelt album that both embodies the full range of the American popular song idiom, but distills it into a distinctly personal expression of a modern-day poet-troubadour. On her new album, Ms. McLorin Salvant shows her uncanny knack of channeling her own personality into the work of her predecessors, both the acclaimed (Bessie Smith) and the less well-known (Blanche Calloway, whose fame during her lifetime was eclipsed by her brother Cab). “I’ve made some choices about celebrating strong women,” Ms. McLorin Salvant explains. “And I want to celebrate independence, the courage not to look or act a certain way.”

UMS welcomes Mr. Diehl, Ms. McLorin Salvant, and Mr. Birnbaum, who make their UMS debuts this afternoon.

T H I S A F T E R N O O N ' S V I C T O R S F O R U M S :

Richard and Norma Sarns—Toyota—Gary Boren—Stout Systems—JazzNet Endowment FundSupporters of this afternoon’s performance of Jelly and George.

M AY W E A L S O R E C O M M E N D. . .

3/4 Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis3/16 Snarky Puppy 4/15 Sanam Marvi

Tickets available at www.ums.org.

O N T H E E D U C AT I O N H O R I Z O N . . .

3/18 You Can Dance: Kidd Pivot (Ann Arbor Y, 400 W. Washington Street, 2–3:30 pm)

3/25 Pre-Concert Lecture Series: Exploring Beethoven’s String Quartets (Michigan League Koessler Room, Third Floor, 911 N. University Ave.,

7:00 pm)

Educational events are free and open to the public unless otherwise noted.