This year’s Jazz Fest will Labor Day Weekend – Aug. 31 – at the Monroe Convention Center.
With all the things to do in town over Labor Day weekend, everyone will be out and about, and we invite all to stop by with friends and family to experience some of our local jazz stars. Likewise, out-of-town jazz aficionados will have even more reason to come and enjoy a Bloomington holiday. Stay as long as you like. We’ll be there all afternoon and evening. Admission and air-conditioning will be free, food and drink will available for purchase!
BHS North Band Director Retires
Janis Stockhouse, a 1977 graduate of the Indiana University School of Music, began her teaching career as Director of Bands and Choirs at North Vermillion Jr./Sr. High School, but after a few years, she moved to Bloomington and taught jazz, concert, and marching band at Bloomington High School North for 38 years. She has served as a clinician and guest conductor many times, as past president of the Indiana Jazz Educators Association Board of Directors, and as an officer for several other music educator and band associations and groups.
During her tenure, all of the North bands won top awards at countless jazz festivals, concert band clinics, and marching band competitions. The BHSN jazz program is especially well-known, in spite of the fact that Janis had to basically teach herself jazz as a new instructor! She has also co-authored the IU Press publications Jazzwomen: […]
BHS South Band Director Retires
Bloomington South High School band director Robert Dubinski retired May 24th after a long and distinguished career.
It was the Star of Indiana Drum and Bugle Corps that three decades ago lured Dubinski away from his music-teaching job in Lodi, New Jersey, where he taught for seven years after graduating from Kean University in 1978. While teaching full-time, he earned a master’s degree from Jersey City State College of New Jersey in 1983.
A couple months after beginning work with Star in 1985, the BHSS band director job opened and he got it. “It was the ideal job,” he says, working with Star and being band director at South, where he taught two jazz bands, the marching band, two concert bands and directed the pep band.
“Dubie,” as he is widely known, noticeably sighed when asked how he could possibly do all that. […]
Joe Donnelly – 2019 Al Cobine Award Recipient
Jackson Creek Middle School band director Joseph Donnelly, this year’s B’town Jazz Al Cobine Award winner, reached into the heart of Bloomington’s past with his recent student production of “Wash Board Blues,” a musical about Hoagy Carmichael.
Nothing could honor the rich musical legacy of Al Cobine better than a show about Hoagy, performed by 60 of Donnelly’s middle-school jazz musicians and singers. Donnelly’s original music and lyrics, telling the remarkable story of Carmichael, made Bloomington’s Indiana Avenue historical marker to Hoagy “come alive.”
“The success of the Carmichael show probably is the key reason I was honored with the Cobine Award,” says Donnelly.
A graduate of New Trier High School in Chicago, Donnelly studied music education at IU in the late 1980s, where he took courses with legendary jazz professor David Baker and saxophonist Eugene Rousseau. He left IU in 1990 to tour with […]
The Future of Jazz 2019
The 15th Annual Future of Jazz Concert was held March 31, 2019 at the Crazy Horse in Bloomington, Indiana. Students from Bloomington High Schools North and South and area middle schools performed for a crowded but enthusiastic room. WFIU’s David Brent Johnson kindly emceed.
Guest artist Richard Dole provided feedback and tips to the students and played a couple tunes for the audience with Monika Herzig, Peter Kienle, and Danny Deckard. Rich has toured with Aretha Franklin, The Temptations, and many other well-known performers. He also plays with several regional orchestras, teaches at Butler University, gives private lessons, and co-hosts the WICR radio show “Have you Heard.”
Many thanks to Monika Herzig and her assistants for organizing the concert and the lead-up jazz jams, and to our sponsors the IU […]