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By Kevin Downey
Tucked away on 32nd Street in north Phoenix is a glorious sight: the sleek, modern, and stunning Center for the Performing Arts at Paradise Valley Community College (PVCC), which opened in 2005. But as impressive as the building is, it’s the performances inside that really merit some notice.
Among these performances in September will be a few members of the PVCC music faculty performing in concert, with students working soundboards and other equipment behind the scenes. This isn’t a class project or simply a means of exposing students to live performance, however. These are serious world-class musicians who regularly perform as soloists and with other groups at concerts around the country. They’ve been performing together at PVCC for six years.
Among the performers is Brett Reed, the director of PVCC’s percussion program and its commercial music program, which focuses on the business side of music. Reed says that the faculty has a recurring theme through each concert series: they perform the music of a prominent performer who is or was also a composer.
“Just pulling together a collection of tunes is not all that interesting to us,” Reed says. “So, we began the series with a complete reading of Miles Davis’s Kind of Blue record. Since then, we’ve been looking at really important figures who are also composers so we can do a tribute concert.”
On Friday, Sept. 17, the faculty will come together for the PVCC Faculty Jazz Concert: A Tribute to Saxophonist Wayne Shorter. Faculty members performing at the concert will be instructors Scott Zimmer on saxophone, Dan Delaney on piano, Reed on vibraphone, and Ted Sistrunk on bass, plus Los Angeles- and Phoenix-based John Lewis on drums.
The group performs a few concerts each year, with at least one in the fall and one in the spring.
“Typically in the fall, we’ll do a tribute to a historical figure in jazz who is best known for their work in the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s,” Reed says. “In the spring, we’ll do a tribute to someone who is currently active. The idea is that jazz is still very much a living art, so we don’t want this to be a museum series.”
PVCC Faculty Jazz Concert: A Tribute to Saxophonist Wayne Shorter takes place Friday, Sept. 17 at 7:30 p.m. at the Center for Performing Arts at PVCC (18401 N. 32nd Street, Phoenix, AZ 85032).
For more information and to purchase tickets, visit the CPA box office, call (602) 787-7738, or visit pvc.maricopa.edu/cpa. Tickets: $12 adults; $10 seniors and PVCC faculty/staff; $8 students; $5 kids 5–15; free for kids under 5 years old. Discounted tickets may be available at showuptickets.com.
