January 3, 2007
ASU’s Cullum Lecture Series will feature jazz
Augusta, GA –Pianist Martin David Jones will kick off Augusta State University’s Cullum Lecture Series, A Year of Jazz at ASU, on Tuesday, Jan. 16, at 7 p.m. in ASU’s Grover C. Maxwell Performing Arts Theatre.
An associate professor of music in ASU’s Department of Music, Dr. Jones will present a concert featuring Ragtime music and stride piano. Following his performance, Gordon (Dick) Goodwin will present his Dixieland Band.
Dr. Jones has performed in New York City at the Lincoln Center, in Washington, D.C. at the Kennedy Center, and in Los Angeles at Gindi Auditorium. He has worked with the Central Wisconsin Symphony Orchestra, the Columbia Orchestra of Maryland, the Schubert Club in Minneapolis, and the ASU Wind Ensemble, among others.
Noted by The Washington Post for “his technique meticulous, his musicianship powerful and his inclinations poetic,” Dr. Jones was the recipient of the Yamaha prize at the Frinna Awerbuch International Piano Competition, took first place in the Baltimore Music Club Competition, and was a finalist at the American Pianists Association Beethoven Fellowship Competition.
He earned a bachelor’s degree from California State University, Northridge, and he received master’s and doctoral degrees in piano performance from the Peabody Conservatory of Music, where he held assistantships in theory and accompanying.
Following Dr. Jones’ performance, Dick Goodwin’s Dixieland Band will perform. Dr. Goodwin is a composer and Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the University of South Carolina and was a recipient of USC's prestigious Educational Foundation Award. He was the 2001 Elizabeth O'Neill Verner Individual Artist winner (the highest honor awarded in the arts by the State of South Carolina), and he has received a number of writer awards from the American Society of Composers and Publishers.
Dr. Goodwin is a jazz artist who leads the Dick Goodwin Quintet, the Dick Goodwin Big Band, and the Dick Goodwin Dixieland Band. A composer/arranger/performer/studio producer, he has toured numerous times to Latin America and Germany. He and others in the band have performed with such entertainers as Natalie Cole, Bob Hope, Johnny Mathis, Henry Mancini, the Temptations, and Gregory Hines. Dr. Goodwin earned his doctoral degree in composition at the University of Texas. He taught composition and theory at the University of Texas for more than 10 years, and then in 1973, moved to USC where he conducted the orchestra and served as head of the theory-composition area.
On the following Tuesday, Jan. 23, the United States Army Jazz Band, a core group of the Signal Corps Band, will feature Swing music at a free concert at 7 p.m. in the Maxwell Theatre. The band is comprised of approximately 40 musicians from across the U.S., Puerto Rico, and the Philippines and performs a wide variety of jazz classics to the more contemporary sounds of today.
General admission tickets to other Cullum concerts are $5-$10 each or $49 for the entire series through ASU’s Department of Continuing Education. Faculty, staff, and students are admitted free with a valid ASU ID. For ticket information, call 706-667-4100.
For more information about the Cullum Lecture Series, or for a schedule of Cullum events, contact Rob Foster, co-chair of the Cullum Committee and associate professor of music, at 706-737-1453 or Jim Benedict, co-chair of the Cullum Committee and professor of mathematics, at 706-737-1672.
January 2007 | February 2007