A Jazz Valentine’s Event is February 12 at The Highland Center in Monterey

 

The Highland County Arts Council’s Second Saturday at Seven Concert Series is back for 2022.  On Saturday, the Arts Council is presenting A Jazz Valentine’s Event.   It will be a special performance with selections from the Great American Songbook.

Jazz Pianist Bill Heid will be back.  He performed in Monterey about a year ago.  For this show, he will be joined by local vocalists Lew Freeman and Claire Sax.

Lew Freeman has been singing for a long time.  When he lived in the Washington area, he sang professionally with the Washington National Opera and he did recital and concert work with orchestras and choruses.

“Given that it is Valentine’s Day, it’s always nice to hear romantic music,” says Freeman.  “But the songs from the so-called Great American Songbook, which is not an official canon, it’s basically the popular music from the 1920’s in through the 1950’s and maybe a little bit into the 1960’s.   It’s a special kind of music that blends words and music in a way that few genres do.  It’s an American creation, but it is popular literally all over the world.  If you go to Europe, you’ll find maybe even greater popularity among Europeans for the great songs by Gershwin and Cole Porter and Richard Rodgers and Jerome Kern and the many other composers, that composed popular songs during that first half of the 20th century.”

A Jazz Valentine’s Event is Saturday, February 12, at 7pm at The Highland Center in Monterey.  Tickets are $25 each and include a dessert and a drink.

“This is some of the most beautiful, moving music that has been created by man and I hope some people come out and listen to it,” says Freeman.  “We enjoy singing it and performing it and I hope that the audience enjoys it.   If they enjoy it half as much as we do performing it, they’re in for a treat.”

Tickets are available at www.highlandcountyartscouncil.org and at the door.

The Highland County Arts Council is a supporter of Allegheny Mountain Radio.

Story By

Bonnie Ralston

Bonnie Ralston is the Assistant Station Coordinator at WVLS and a Highland County news reporter. She began volunteering at Allegheny Mountain Radio in the fall of 2005. In 2006 she became an AMR employee and worked in Bath County for eight years as the WCHG Station Coordinator and then as the news reporter there. She began working in radio while in college and has stayed connected to radio, in one way or another, for more than thirty years. She grew up in Staunton, Virginia, while spending a lot of time on her family’s farm in Deerfield, Virginia. She enjoys spending time outside, watching old TV shows and movies and tending to her chickens.

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