The Hillsdale Hepcats, Faculty Jazz Ensemble, will perform a variety of jazz hits Nov. 16 at 8 p.m. in Phillips Auditorium. The ensemble will play favorites “Nica’s Dream,” “Peace,” and “Jungle Juice.” The Ensemble includes Director and Teacher of Music Chris McCourry on trumpet, Lecturer in Music Jon Gerwirtz on saxophones, Lecturer in Music Mathew Endahl on piano, Lecturer in Music James Ball on bass, Lecturer in Music Larry Ochiltree on drums, and freshmen Dani Shillingstad on vocals.
“I’m excited, it’s kept me on my toes for the last month or so to learn my stuff,” Shillingstad said. “They’ve been good to me. Chris has treated me really well to relieve my nerves. I’m really looking forward to it.”
The entire performance is constituted of the work of Horace Silver, an American jazz pianist and composer, who wrote in a distinctive, often humorous and funky, style and pioneered the field of hard bop.
“I am in two of the songs. They’re both tough and both difficult to perform. I couldn’t pick a favorite, one is a little more funky, the other is more jazzy in how you would expect,” Shillingstad said. “Horace Silver was a pianist. He had his own band and he generally didn’t do vocals. He wrote them, but it is difficult to find recordings of the vocals.”
The performance this Saturday is the first of two the Hepcats will play, each focusing on a different aspect of jazz.
“We play two performances per year, and one of them focuses on an influential composer, and this year it is Horace Silver. He was a very influential jazz composer and has a very particular style,” McCourry said. “Most of it is beat bop, and a lot of our stuff will be that sort.”
Horace Silver was a pioneer of the jazz genre, so the band will be playing a variety of beat bop, funk, and some more traditional jazz pieces.
“He wrote a huge variety of stuff — he was probably best known for putting a funky spin of beat bop,” McCourry said. “Horace Silver wrote a huge variety of music, and where normally it would take weeks to pick the music, in one evening we had to start cutting music.”
The Hepcats have been around for four years, the only variant being their vocalist.
“This concert will introduce out new vocalist, Dani Shillingstad,” McCourry said. “Everybody in the group is really excited for all of the music. It’s all great stuff and I think it’ll be a great concert. There are a couple that are harder that I am really focusing on, but I think it’ll be a really good time and a great concert.”
Mixing a new vocalist into the group, and exploring a newer style of music but a contemporary musician, the band predicts a great show.
“I am really looking forward to this as my first performance with the Hillcats,” Shillingstad said. “It is a new experience and it is going to be a great performance — everyone should come.”
tsawyer1@hillsdale.edu