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Sunday, December 5, 2010 | 3pm

Concert Hall :: 909 W. Armitage

First Sundays Jazz Composers Series

James Davis and Vincent Davis

$5 General Admission

BOX OFFICE: 773.728.6000

James Davis is an active trumpet player, composer and educator in the Chicago area. He received his Masters Degree in Trumpet Performance from the University of North Texas and Undergraduate Music Degree from the University of Texas at Arlington. Mr. Davis is on faculty at Triton College, Wheaton College, and is an active private instructor in the Chicago area. Davis has toured and recorded with his own Quintet and the co-lead group Zing!, on the Chicago-based ears&eyes Record label. He regularly performs with many different musical ensembles including Chicago Goes West, Tomorrow Music Orchestra, Balkano, the Ian Torres Big Band, and the Jason Steele Quartet. Davis has toured with the Glenn Miller Orchestra and the Grammy nominated One O'Clock Lab Band, where he was frequently featured as a soloist.

James's band features Caroline Davis on alto saxophone, Benjamin Lewis on piano, Matt Ulery on bass, and Jon Deitemyer on drums.

"James's best tunes...share the simple (but not simplistic) tunefulness that Bill Frisell and Pat Metheny have used to such great advantage. They have a wide open prairie sensibility and the melodies forswear the vertiginous leaps and bounds endemic to bebop, early avant-garde jazz, and today's free-improv energy music..." -- Neil Tesser, Chicago Reader

JCDavis.org

Chicago native Vincent Davis is an internationally acclaimed jazz percussionist, composer and teacher. The seed of music was planted in Davis early on in life; growing up in a home filled with the influences of rock, jazz and gospel. In 1979 Davis left the Windy City to attend the Milwaukee Conservatory of Music, where his love of jazz and skill at drumming further bloomed and flourished. It was here, that Davis met his mentor Manty Ellis. Davis trained and studied with Ellis, primarily focusing on Jazz Trap drumming. The two began performing together, along with several other local musicians on the Milwaukee jazz scene.

Currently, Davis can be found collaborating on various projects with the second generation of AACM members, mainly Ernest Dawkins and Nicole Mitchell. He is also the founder of the Avante Garde free form band "Laws of Motion", which includes Vincent Davis, Ed Wilkerson, Darius Savage, and Scott Hesse. Davis' quest is to make music that will reach and move people across traditional boundaries.