SCJS to celebrate Jazz Appreciation Month
With Altamonte Jazz Ensemble & Linda Cole
In a tribute to Duke Ellington & Count Basie

April being Jazz Appreciation Month, the Space Coast Jazz Society will host a very special event for its April meeting. It’s the 20-piece Altamonte Jazz Ensemble with vocalist Linda Cole and emcee Jack Simpson in a "Tribute to Count Basie and Duke Ellington,"

The concert will be at 2 PM Sunday, April 13, at the Cocoa Beach Country Club Auditorium. Tickets are $10 for SCJS members and $15 for nonmembers. Students are free. Tickets will be available at the door.

Directed by Mike Arena, the band will mark its 30^th anniversary this year. It is highly regarded as one of the best all-volunteer community bands in the country. Operating under the auspices of the City of Altamonte Springs, the band performs at least six times a year at the Eastmonte Civic Centre but rarely travels.

Arena is retired from the electronics industry and has been associated with music most of his adult life. He is one of six saxophonists in the band. but his passion is bandleading. "We work toward a degree of perfection," he says. "Just like classical music has endured through the ages, I would like the big bands to endure. It is bands like this that keep it going."

While this will be the Altamonte Jazz Ensemble’s first SCJS appearance, the group still has fans who remember when it was one of the favorite groups to perform at the old Jazz on the Beach Food Band Benefits staged in the 90s by broadcaster Simpson.

Simpson himself is one of Arena’s biggest fans. "They are amazing," Simpson says. "How appropriate it is that they will be doing their Basie-Ellington tribute for the Jazz Society during Jazz Appreciation Month. Nobody is better than they are at keeping jazz alive."

Billed as "Central Florida’s Lady of Song," Linda Cole is a frequent guest vocalist with the Altamonte Jazz Ensemble. She has been a headliner for both the SCJS and the Central Florida Jazz Society. On April 25th she will be one of the featured vocalists on a WFIT Sunset Jazz Cruise.

Cole has opened for such jazz greats as David Benoit, Spyro Gyra, Chuck Magione, Richard Elliot and Mark Murphy. She has also appeared on stage with Bob Newhart, the Temptations and the London Symphony Orchestra,

At the April 13 concer3t, there will be table seating , stadium seating and an area for dancing.

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