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Fred Irby III
Howard University Jazz Ensemble 2024: A Return to Glory
by Jack Bowers
The Howard University Jazz Ensemble celebrates its golden anniversary in 2024 with the release of its annual studio recording, A Return to Glory, dedicated this year to Howard alumnus Chadwick Boseman, an acclaimed actor best known for his starring role in the film Black Panther and his masterful film portrayals of baseball star Jackie Robinson and soul singer James Brown. Boseman left us far too soon, at age forty-three, in August 2020. The album marks another historic ...
Continue ReadingHoward University Jazz Ensemble 2023: Nefertiti
by Jack Bowers
The Howard University Jazz Ensemble was formed almost half a century ago, in 1975, by Fred Irby III, its first--and, so far, only--music director. Every year since 1976, the ensemble has recorded and released an album to showcase its prowess and growth under Irby's baton. This year's entry, Nefertiti, is a tribute to the legendary saxophonist Wayne Shorter, many of whose compositions have become jazz standards, including the album's title song. Interestingly, Shorter, a twelve-time Grammy winner ...
Continue ReadingHoward University Jazz Ensemble: HUJE 2022
by Jack Bowers
Recordings by the superb Howard University Jazz Ensemble have been surfacing like clockwork each year since shortly after the orchestra was formed in 1975 by its first (and only) music director, Fred Irby III. Sometimes the albums have overall themes, while others (such as this one) are dedicated to one or more of the university's distinguished alumni. Andrew Nathaniel White III, a Washingtonian who graduated cum laude from Howard in 1964, was a multi-instrumentalist whose notable career ...
Continue ReadingHoward University Jazz Ensemble: HUJE 2018
by Jack Bowers
One sure sign of spring is the arrival of the latest yearly recording by the superb Howard University Jazz Ensemble, a tradition that dates without pause from the days of vinyl in 1976, one year after the ensemble was formed by its first and only music director, Fred Irby III. For archivists and numbers-crunchers, that's forty-four years and counting. Unlike some of its precursors, HUJE 2018 is entirely instrumental; it does, however, include the usual measure of ...
Continue Reading2017 Howard University Jazz Ensemble: A Tribute to Geri Allen
by Jack Bowers
Pianist / composer Geri Allen, one of the Howard University Jazz Studies program's distinguished alumnae, left us far too soon, succumbing to cancer on June 27, 2017, two weeks after her sixtieth birthday. During a career that spanned more than thirty-five years, Allen performed and recorded with a who's who of renowned jazz artists from Ron Carter, Ornette Coleman, Greg Osby and Jimmy Cobb to Charlie Haden, Kenny Garrett, Paul Motian, David Murray and many others including her husband and ...
Continue ReadingHoward University Jazz Ensemble: Beatrice
by Jack Bowers
One sure sign of spring is the arrival of the latest studio recording by the always exemplary Howard University Jazz Ensemble, a tradition that dates to 1976, one year after Fred Irby III (who remains its first and only music director) founded the Washington, DC-based ensemble. Unlike most of these enterprises, which are labeled HUJE followed by the number of the year in which they were recorded, this one has a name: Beatrice. While no other information about her is ...
Continue ReadingHoward University Jazz Ensemble: HUJE 2014
by Jack Bowers
Another year, another splendid album by the exemplary Howard University Jazz Ensemble from Washington, DC. Not that that should surprise anyone; Fred Irby III, who is completing his fortieth year as the band's first and only director, has ushered his students into a recording studio for the last thirty-nine of them, dating back to the days of vinyl records, with essentially similar results: tasteful albums of big-band jazz that are as engaging as those produced by any university-level ensemble anywhere. ...
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Fred Irby III
Instrument: Composer / conductor
