Don Keranen Memorial Jazz Festival Featuring Music from Detroit Native Kris Johnson – Keweenaw Report

Michigan Tech’s ensemble of terrific jazz players was started in large part by Don Keranen. He is a celebrated former university music director and the man behind the school’s jazz program. Today the festival honors Don’s memory by showcasing the amazing talents of Michigan Tech students through three entertaining performances.

“You know, our top group, the Jazz Lab Band, had a concert at the Ironwood Theatre a handful of weeks ago. And so we spent the least amount of time in history working on this music. And so they’ve had to work hard to get a lot of this difficult music prepared for the festival, especially the Jazz Lab Band.

But we’ve got a bunch of bands playing at the festival. So we’ve all been working hard. The Workshop Brass Band that does New Orleans music has learned almost all new music for this concert, which will be fun. And the R&D band has been working with Prof. Drew Kielpela on a whole bunch of music. Some of it will feature our guest artist Kris Johnson.” – Adam Meckler, Jazz Studies Director, Michigan Tech University

This year Michigan Tech Jazz Studies Director Adam Meckler will invite Detroit native and former Count Basie Big Band trumpeter, Kris Johnson to join the students on the Rozsa stage. Johnson is set to play during two of the festival’s shows, one on Friday night, and Saturday evening.

“Well, if I’m being honest, some of them want to go see the hockey game on Friday night. They’ll be traveling out there to see some of my members from the top group will kind of go out to see the hockey team and then come back. But I mean, everybody’s pumped.

You know, Chris has come in to do digital or has come in to do online workshops with my students before. So some of my students have worked with Chris a little bit and they’re excited to play his music. Because we’ve been working on his music, students have been listening to Chris’s music. Chris is also an Emmy-nominated composer for a great web series. So he’s done all kinds of like film scoring and different things like that. And we have a lot of students that are involved in sound design. Like we have sound design majors and audio production majors here at Michigan Tech.

So we have a big master class with Chris at 11 a.m. on Thursday, where we will expect to see a lot of students from outside of the jazz program as well coming to learn from Chris and everything that he’s done in his career.” Adam Meckler, Jazz Studies Director, Michigan Tech University

Friday night’s show will start at 7:30 pm. On Saturday Meckler invites prospective Michigan Tech Students and middle school and high school band players to attend a master class in the band room to learn a tune by ear and perform later in the day. Tickets for the festival cost 15 dollars and are a part of the pay-as-you-are-able program. Those interested in learning more about the Don Keranen Memorial Jazz Festival on Friday and Saturday at the Rozsa Center on Michigan Tech’s campus can find more details here.