Swing Swing Swing with Benny Goodman

Featuring a live performance by the John Pizzarelli Quartet with special guest Ken Peplowski on clarinet

Series

Jazz singer/guitarist and longtime friend of the JBFC, John Pizzarelli, brings his quartet back to our stage for a night of film and live performance. This time John’s exploring the life, music, and career of one of his music idols—and a frequent visitor to his childhood home—the legendary clarinetist Benny Goodman. John’s special guest for the concert portion of the evening will be Ken Peplowski, called “arguably the greatest living clarinetist” by filmmaker and radio presenter Russell Davies of London’s BBC2.

John Pizzarelli will regale the audience with Benny Goodman anecdotes and a delectable sampling of some of the King of Swing’s greatest filmed performances.

SOLD OUT Unredeemed tickets may become available for purchase. Sign up at the box office for the stand-by line one hour before showtime.

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Live performance by the John Pizzarelli Quartet with special guest Ken Peplowski on clarinet

Wednesday, May. 31 2017, 7:30

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SOLD OUT Unredeemed tickets may become available for purchase. Sign up at the box office for the stand-by line one hour before showtime.

Described by NPR as “one of the hottest acts in jazz today,” world-renowned guitarist and singer John Pizzarelli began his remarkable career playing duo engagements with his father, Bucky, in the early 1980s. Since then, John has gone on to record over 25 albums as a performer/leader, and appears on more than 200 others as a featured accompanist. His most recent album as a leader, Midnight McCartney, was the brainchild of Paul McCartney after John accompanied Sir Paul on the 2012 Grammy Award–winning album Kisses on the Bottom. A Pleasantville regular, John has been performing at the JBFC since shortly after we opened in June 2001, and has recorded and mixed two albums at the Media Arts Lab’s state-of-the-art recording studio.

Ken Peplowski began his career playing one-nighters 48 weeks a year with Buddy Morrow’s Tommy Dorsey Orchestra, an experience he calls “a great road-school.” In 1984 Benny Goodman came out of retirement to put together a new band and hired Peplowski. He has since recorded some 50 albums as a soloist—among them the critically acclaimed Noir Blue, In Search Of, and Maybe September—and close to 400 as a sideman, with artists including Mel Tormé, Rosemary Clooney, Hank Jones, Peggy Lee, Bill Charlap, and Madonna. He has headlined the Hollywood Bowl, Carnegie Hall, the Blue Note, and Dizzy’s Club, recorded the Darius Milhaud Clarinet Concerto, and has been a featured soloist, playing Mozart at the Siletz Bay Music Festival. Last year he premiered a concerto written for him by Dick Hyman. For eight years, Peplowski was musical director of the Oregon Festival of American Music, and he is a longtime performer/consultant to The Jazz Cruise.

This film is part of the Jazz Sessions 2017: The Greats on Camera series.