PORT ANGELES — Here’s what’s for lunch: “People Get Ready,” “How High the Moon,” plus dessert from Duke Ellington and Antonio Carlos Jobim.
This meal of jazz, served up inside Peninsula College’s Pirate Union Building — aka the PUB stage — has as its cooks singer Robbin Eaves, flugelhorn player Dmitri Matheny and the Peninsula College Jazz Ensemble, all at 12:30 p.m. Tuesday.
Admission is free to the concert at the PUB, which is in the J Building on the main campus at 1502 E. Lauridsen Blvd.
Matheny, a longtime resident of San Francisco, is known for his work with Motown acts such as the Temptations, Martha Reeves, the Four Tops and the O’Jays.
Yet he is a jazz horn player at heart, a magna cum laude graduate of Boston’s Berklee College of Music and a protege of the late Art Farmer.
He’s also an admirer of Peninsula College music professor — and composer, pianist and arranger — David Jones.
The men’s friendship developed when Matheny visited Port Angeles last summer to teach a clinic.
“When [Jones] invited me to return, I jumped at the opportunity,” he said, since he’d taken great pleasure in playing with his fellow jazz musicians here.
Matheny is on the road a lot these days — which he loves — teaching and performing from California to Massachusetts.
He has staged more than 500 free concerts for children, introducing tens of thousands of youngsters to jazz — in addition to appearing as a composer, arranger, producer, annotator or flugelhorn soloist on some 60 albums.
To Matheny, melody is the miraculous thing. He credits his mentor for instilling this.
“To create a strong, original melody is what jazz improvisation is all about. Art remains one of the most lyrical and melodic improvisers in history.
“If anyone understood the power and profundity of the elusive true melody, it was Art Farmer.”
For information on Tuesday afternoon’s concert and other free public events at Peninsula College, visit www.pencol.edu or the college’s Facebook page, or phone Jones at 360-417-6405.
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Features Editor Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5062, or at diane.urbani@peninsuladailynews.com.