Friday Night Live!

March 8 - The Jauron Perry Quintet

Jauron Perry is a rising Detroit-Native Jazz Trumpeter, composer, and bandleader, now in the second year of undergraduate studies in jazz performance at Michigan State University’s College of Music. Selected as the Next Generation of Talent award recipient, Jauron has quickly gained experience performing and working with Detroit jazz masters such as Rodney Whitaker, Dwight Adams, James Carter, Vincent Chandler, Kris Johnson, Diego Rivera, Sean Dobbins, Wendell Harrison, Marion Hayden, Ralphe Armstrong, and Regina Carter, to name a few. Other sensations outside his hometown include Etienne Charles, Marquis Hill, Wynton Marsalis, Camille Thurman, Dee Dee Bridgewater, Walter Blanding, Joe Farnsworth, Jerome Jennings, Tim Warfield, Helen Sung, and Jeff Hamilton. Jauron also continues to be featured in popular events, including the Detroit Jazz Festival, Michigan Jazz Festival, African World Festival, East Lansing Summer Solstice Jazz Festival, and, as of recently, the Jack Rudin Jazz Championship at Jazz at Lincoln Center, where he performed with MSU’s Jazz Orchestra 1 (The Bebop Spartans) placing in the top 3 of the collegiate ensembles.

The ensemble consists of Jauron Perry (trumpet), William Hill, III (piano), Joe Fielder (drums), Langston Kitchen (bass), and Kevin Brewster (saxophonist).

April 12 - Room 131

If you fuse Detroit jazz master Marcus Belgrave and techno pioneer Mike Banks, you get Jon Dixon, a multi-genre musician who understands each style’s theory and stylings while pushing them forward. Passion, soul, conviction, and grit speak to Marquis Johnson, who carries the flame of an authentic and genuine Detroit sound. After meeting in high school during band, held in classroom 131 almost 20 years ago, the dynamic duo have teamed up to create music and concepts only achievable by musicians of their caliber. Room 131 delivers a sound ahead of its time.

May 10 - De'Sean Jones & Urban Art Orchestra

The Urban Art Orchestra is exploding onto Detroit’s eclectic musical scene, captivating audiences, holistically engaging with its community, and fusing innovative, genre-bending orchestral performances and collaborations with the highest levels of musical artistry. UAO is reimagining a fresh vision of what an orchestra can achieve in the 21st century. Led by genre-fluid saxophonist De’Sean Jones, Urban Art Orchestra is a flexible and innovative hybrid orchestra that celebrates living composers, reimagines all genres of music, and collaborates with a wide range of diverse musical guests, composers, choreographers, dancers, and mixed media artists.