Sunday's Super Sounds

Sunday February 7:

The Greater Middletown Concert Association presents the Heartbeat Dixieland Jazz Band in concert at 3 p.m. in the Performing Arts Center of Middletown High School, LaRosa Lane.  Providing the "beat" in Heartbeat is drummer Bill Lagozzo and joining him will be Sherman Kahn (clarinet), Scott Black (trumpet), Al Brogdon (trombone), Ed Cercone (piano), Bob Price (banjo) and Dianne Mover (vocals.) They play music from the early days of jazz, when it came to life in the private clubs ad taverns of New Orleans. For ticket information, call 860-347-4887 or 860-346-3369 - now, you ca buy tickets online at www.greatermiddletownconcertassociation.org.  

Vocalist Giacomo Gates come back to Middletown to play a free concert at 3 p.m. in The Russell House, 350 High Street.  Gates, who started his career in the mid-1990s after working a series of construction jobs, is a modern master of "vocalese", taking instrumental solos and creating vocals for them (either wordless or in "scat" syllables or giving them real word phrases.  He also teaches at Wesleyan, at the Hartford Conservatory of Music, the Neighborhood Music School in New Haven and conducts workshops throughout the country.  He's issued 4 CDs as a leader and just returned from a tour of Australia.  To find out more about Gates, go to www.giacomogates.com. As stated above, the concert is free and open to the public. 

If you desire to do singing but have issues with reading music, join Professor Neely Bruce for a session of Shaped Note Singing at 4 p.m. in Downey House, at the corner of Court & High Streets. It's great communal fun.  For more information, call the good professor/composer/pianist at 860-685-2578 or email at nbruce@wesleyan.edu.