The department of music’s Jazz Orchestra, Jazz Band and Blue and Gold Jazz Combo Ensembles are taking the stage on Tuesday, Nov. 4 for their fall campus concerts.  

 The joint program begins at 6 p.m. in Lovett Auditorium. The opening performance, by the Gold Jazz Combo, will include classic songs like Horace Silver’s “Song for My Father,” Jimmy Heath’s “Gingerbread Boy” and “Here, There, and Everywhere” by John Lennon and Paul McCartney. 

The Blue Jazz Combo’s following performance includes Charlie Parker’s “Donna Lee,”  by Erroll Garner’s “Misty,” Wes Montgomery’s “West Coast Blues,” Luiz Bonfi’s “Sambe de Orfeo” and “Straight, No Chaser” by Thelonious Monk.

The Murray State Jazz Band will perform at 7:30 p.m. with big band classics Charlie Shavers’s “Undecided,” Conrad O. Johnson’s “Kashmere,” “This Can’t Be Love” by Rodgers and Hart, Sammy Nestico’s “A Warm Breeze,” Larry Kerchner’s “Emerald Eyes” and “I Wish” by Stevie Wonder.   

The program will close out with the Murray State Jazz Orchestra’s performance of Bill Pots’s “Big Swing Face,” Bobby Hebb’s “Sunny,” Antonio Carlos Jobim’s “Corcovado,” Stan Kenton’s “My Funny Valentine,” Tito Puente’s “Ran Kan Kan,” Stevie Wonder’s “Sir Duke” and “It Might as well be Spring” arranged by Don Schamber.   

Todd E. Hill, a professor of music, will direct the program in this, his final of 20 years as the Director of Jazz Studies at Murray State. Hill was awarded KMEA’s esteemed “Outstanding University Music Educator” in 2016. He has produced five album releases, which have been performed four times at the famed Elmhurst College Jazz Festival and the MidWest International Band Clinic in Chicago. 

The concerts are free and open to the public.