About this Event
The Mount Holyoke College Jazz Ensembles present their annual tribute to the 1940s radio show that has become a local classic! With special guest Channel 22’s Brian Lapis. Mark Gionfriddo directs. Please note that performances were initially scheduled for Saturday, March 4, but due to a Mount Holyoke schedule conflict, the date has been changed to Sunday, March 5.
Tickets are general admission. $20.00 premium front and center seating. $15.00 regular seating. $10.00 seniors and students. Tickets are available at the UMASS Fine Arts Center Box Office in Amherst; at the Odyssey Bookshop, Village Commons, South Hadley; and at the door subject to availability. For phone orders: 413-545-2511 or 1-800-999-UMASS. Online ticket purchases are available through the UMass Fine Arts Center. For online tickets, visit https://fac.umass.edu/Online/MHC. Doors open one hour prior to each performance.
Performance sponsors of The Big Broadcast! are: Mount Holyoke College, WWLP-22News & The CW Springfield, New England Public Radio and the NEPR News Network, The Republican powering MassLive and El Pueblo Latino and Loomis Communities.
Brian Lapis Celebrates His 10th Season as Emcee Fred Kelley.
The Jazz Ensembles of Mount Holyoke College present the 12th edition of The Big Broadcast! Created and directed by Mark Gionfriddo, who is also onstage as “Matt Morgan”, The Big Broadcast! is a re-creation of a live 1940's radio show featuring the Mount Holyoke College Big Band, Vocal Jazz, and Chamber Jazz Ensembles performing well-known tunes from the swing era and the American songbook. WWLP-TV meteorologist Brian Lapis is emcee “Fred Kelley” for his 10th consecutive season.
Mount Holyoke College music faculty member Mark Gionfriddo originally created The Big Broadcast! for a small cabaret group he directed, and incorporated it into the concert season at Mount Holyoke College. “Preparation for the show began early in January when my students and I researched live radio broadcasts of the 1940's: big band swing music, those great radio serials, and the commercials of the day," said Gionfriddo. “We incorporate all of those elements into our production to give the audience the feel of an authentic radio variety program on a fictitious station named WJAZ."
"This year, much of what we're presenting is all new material to The Big Broadcast!,” says Gionfriddo. “We are performing two Johnny Mercer songs about trains: Harold Arlen’s "On The Atchison, Topeka & The Santa Fe" from the movie The Harvey Girls, as arranged for Rosemary Clooney and Harry James; and Les Brown’s “Sentimental Journey” as sung by Doris Day.
Gionfriddo and Lapis always include one swing era “buddy number” for The Big Broadcast!; this year, they’re rehearsing “Chicago Style” from the Hope and Crosby movie Road to Bali, which they’ll perform as Morgan and Kelley. Gionfriddo and Lapis also sing with a female trio a great arrangement of Irving Berlin's standard "There's No Business Like Show Business" as originally recorded by Bing Crosby, The Andrews Sisters, and Dick Haymes. Gionfriddo added “We are performing a classic 'riff song' (written specifically to get people onto a dance floor) by Artie Shaw called "One Night Stand". I’ve also made a new arrangement of an old chestnut, "My Melancholy Baby," which will be premiered by Vocal Jazz.
Ticketholders who purchased tickets for Saturday, March 4, may use them for Sunday, March 5. Those ticketholders who want a refund may return their tickets to their point of purchase by the end of the business day on March 3.
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