Sunday, Jan. 12 marks the return of two Lawrence alumni as members of the Quattro Formaggi Quartet.
The Quattro Formaggi one of a number of alumni saxophone quartets, members of which are graduates of the Lawrence University saxophone studio.
The members of the quartet are Jared Thomas ’03 on baritone saxophone, Josh Vande Hey ’01 on tenor saxophone, John Kelly with soprano saxophone, and Brad Carman playing alto saxophone.
The concert features music by J. S. Bach, Lawson Lunde and Frank Cordell. The program will also include Vande Hey’s “Variations on a Theme by Perry, Schon, and Cain” and an arrangement of Jelly Roll Morton’s “Black Bottom Stomp” by Lawrence’s own director of jazz studies, Fred Sturm.
Finally, the program features the world premier of Forrest “Woody” Mankowski’s “Sonata No. 1,” a work commissioned by and composed for the quartet.
Since their years at Lawrence, Thomas and Vande Hey have certainly still been performing and developing musically. Quattro Formaggi is only one of their many activities – Vande Hey is returning to the Lawrence campus from his home in England where he works as a physicist at a university near London.
Thomas works in institutional research at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. They have both taken a break from their regular lives to perform a series of concerts with the quartet.
The Quattro Formaggi Quartet will be performing at 5 p.m. in the Memorial Chapel.
Additionally, saxophone professor Steven Jordheim’s faculty recital is Sunday at 8 p.m. He will be joined by his colleagues Anthony Padilla on piano and Wen-Lei Gu on violin.
Jazz quartet revisits Lawrence
