RSO Will Rub Shoulders With Jazz Masters

RIDGEFIELD — Classical and jazz fans alike will get a rare chance to mingle on November 11, when jazz master Marvin Stamm and his quartet join Maestro Sidney Rothsteins’ Ridgefield Symphony Orchestra in a concert incorporating the best of both worlds.

The event, billed as “RSO Goes Jazz,” will take center stage in the Anne S. Richardson Auditorium at Ridgefield High School for an 8 pm performance Maestro Rothstein has said may be “the highlight of the season.”

Mr Rothstein pointed to “Loverman, All the Things You Are” and “Ellington Fantasy” as joint arrangements that may “create a whole new audience in the area.” Both groups will also play individually from their own repertoires.

RSO will start the evening’s musical extravaganza with a suite from West Side Story, by Leonard Bernstein, followed by Jerome Kern’s All the Things You Are and Lover Man.

The jazz group will then swing into a set selected especially for the unique evening before the orchestra comes back with “Subway Jam” from Copeland’s Music for a Great City and two excerpts from Ellington’s suite from The River. The orchestra and the quartet will then combine for Duke Ellington’s Fantasy.

Marvin Stamm, a trumpeter from neighboring North Salem, N.Y., with a worldwide presence, has played with the Stan Kenton and Woody Herman orchestras and has traveled the world with his trumpet. He travels to China following his engagement here.

Mr Stamm heads a talented group that includes Ed Soph on drums, Bill Mays on piano and Rufus Reid on bass. All are well-known and respected musicians.

Tickets for the program, which is a benefit performance to help underwrite the cost of the growing number of the Ridgefield Symphony Youth Programs, are available at the RSO box office for $100, $50, $40 and $30.

Holders of $100 tickets will receive center orchestra seating and an invitation to cocktails and a buffet supper at Philip and Christine Lodewick’s Wicklow Farm on Spring Valley Road in Ridgefield. The Lodewick Foundation, along with John Grissmer and an anonymous donor, have underwritten the evening. For more information, call 203/438-3889 or visit the RSO Web site at ridgefieldsymphony.org.