PORT ANGELES — The Peninsula College Foundation will present an evening of jazz standards as “Tom & Linda Play Hoagy & Cole” during its spring concert Friday.
Tickets are available for the 7 p.m. concert in Maier Hall on the Port Angeles Peninsula College campus at 1502 E. Lauridsen Blvd.
Tickets are $15. They are available online at Brown Paper Tickets or www.pencol.edu/foundation.
They will be sold at the door on a space-available basis. Seating is limited, and last year’s spring concert sold out.
Tom Varner
Tom Varner is internationally known as a pioneer of jazz/improvised/new music on the French horn, Peninsula College said in a news release.
His visit will be his first performance on the North Olympic Peninsula.
Since relocating with his family to Seattle in 2005, Varner has performed at the Vancouver, Earshot and Bumbershoot festivals; the Seattle Art Museum; and the Royal Room, Tula’s and other clubs, while serving as assistant professor of jazz performance at Cornish College of the Arts.
In addition to his 14 CDs as a leader/composer, he plays on more than 70 other CDs with such performers as Miles Davis and Quincy Jones, Steve Lacy and John Zorn.
Varner won the 2000 Jazz Composers Alliance Composition Award and has been awarded residencies at the MacDowell, Civitella and Blue Mountain arts colonies. He has received grants from the NEA and the Doris Duke Foundation/Chamber Music America.
Linda Dowdell
Prior to life on the North Olympic Peninsula, pianist Linda Dowdell toured the world as musical director of Mikhail Baryshnikov’s White Oak Dance Project and the Mark Morris Dance Group.
While living in New York City, she worked closely with Hoagy B. Carmichael, son of the songwriter, developing a musical using Carmichael songs, as well as producing concerts and tours of his music.
Dowdell has known Varner since their childhood in Millburn, N.J., and, with bassist Ted Enderle, will perform interpretations of songs by two well-known songwriters from Indiana: Hoagy Carmichael and Cole Porter.
Dowdell and Enderle performed with Friends of Brubeck at last spring’s Peninsula College Foundation concert.
“What a treat to play these wonderful songs with Tom and Ted,” Dowdell said.
“Tom is so innovative and dexterous, a true master. The color the French horn brings is absolutely unique.
“What fun to reinterpret these familiar songs, like ‘Star Dust’ and ‘Night and Day,’ with a new instrument and an old friend.”
Proceeds from the event, sponsored by Wilder Auto, support students and programs at Peninsula College.
For more information, contact Cheri Jessup, foundation specialist, at cjessup@pencol.edu.
