Wallace State Jazz Band Prepares for Spring Tour to Chicago

CONTACT: Gail Crutchfield, Communications and Marketing, Wallace State Community College, 256.352.8064, gail.crutchfield@wallacestate.edu
 

The Wallace State Jazz Band performs at an event on
campus in April. The group heads to Chicago later this month.

 
HANCEVILLE, Ala. – Chicago may be best known as the windy city, but if you listen closely those winds carry with it strains of jazz and blues made famous by favorite sons Nat King Cole, Benny Goodman and Herbie Hancock.
Members of the Wallace State Community College Jazz Band will walk in the footsteps of those musical giants when they visit the Illinois city that is the starting point for the Historic Route 66, memorialized in a song first recorded by Cole.
An out-of-state trip is an annual event for the jazz band which often plays shows in and around the region. The band most recently performed during Cullman’s Strawberry Festival.
“It’s good for them to get out and expose them to different places other than the South,” said band director and music department chair Ricky Burks.
Chicago, Burks said, was the place where Dixieland Jazz was first recorded, so the trip will give the students a chance to see where musical history was made.
The group will be performing at Hancock Tower Plaza and at the Field Museum. Burks expects large audiences for their lunch-time performances.
Trumpet players Michah Greene and Courtney Tindale said they are excited about the trip. They will depart for Chicago on May 29 and return on June 1.
Along with performances, they plan to do some site-seeing at the Navy Pier, Shedd Aquarium and see a performance by the Blue Man Group.
Greene, of Hartselle, is looking forward to performing in a “different environment and different atmosphere” from their usual performances.
Also, this will most likely be the last performances for many of the band members who have performed together for years.
“We spend so much time together, it’s like our second family,” Greene said of the relationships that have developed between band members over the years. “We like to spend time with each other.”
“This will be the one last thing we do together,” added Tindale, of Cold Springs.
 
______________________________
Kristen Holmes
Director, Communications & Marketing
Wallace State Community College
P.O. Box 2000, Hanceville, AL 35077
1-866-350-9722 256-352-8118 direct
256-352-8314 fax 256-339-2519 cell
Visit us online at www.wallacestate.edu