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Jazz Clinics

The jazz clinic series at LIU Brooklyn features established and emerging musicians who are recognized in their fields, and who have made a commitment to teaching as well as performing. Our diverse jazz clinics series has featured a wide range of clinicians from NEA Jazz Master vocalist Sheila Jordan to Grammy Award winning drummer Jeff "Tain" Watts. Our series provides our students the unique opportunity to work side by side with these top professionals, and to learn from their years of performing experience and teaching methodology.

The series takes place on select Tuesdays, from 4:00-6:00 PM in the Barbara Elliot Performing Arts Studio, RM H-106 in the Humanities Building. All clinics are free and open to the public. For more information about the series, please contact Sam Newsome at samuel.newsome@liu.edu or 718-488-1000, ext. 1874.

Upcoming Clinics

Matthew Shipp: Tuesday, February 26, 2013

Matthew Shipp was born December 7, 1960 in Wilmington, Delaware. He started piano at 5 years old with the regular piano lessons most kids have experienced. He fell in love with jazz at 12 years old. After moving to New York in 1984 he quickly became one of the leading lights in the New York jazz scene. He was a sideman in the David S. Ware quartet and also for Roscoe Mitchell's Note Factory before making the decision to concentrate on his own music.

Mr. Shipp has reached the holy grail of jazz in that he possesses a unique style on his instrument that is all of his own- and he's one of the few in jazz that can say so. Mr. Shipp has recorded a lot of albums with many labels but his 2 most enduring relationships have been with two labels. In the 1990s he recorded a number of chamber jazz cds with Hatology, a group of cds that charted a new course for jazz that, to this day, the jazz world has not realized. In the 2000s Mr Shipp has been curator and director of the label Thirsty Ear's "Blue Series" and has also recorded for them. In this collection of recordings he has generated a whole body of work that is visionary, far reaching and many faceted .

Matthew Shipp is truly one of the leading lights of a new generation of jazz giants.

Vic Juris: Tuesday, March 19, 2012

A native of Jersey City, N.J., Juris took up guitar at age 10 during the summer of 1963. Accordion, he notes, was a far more popular instrument than guitar at that time. All that would change the following year when Beatlemania washed up on the Jersey shore.

In 1975, Juris made his recording debut on alto saxophonist Eric Kloss' Bodies' Warmth (Muse). He later gigged with fusioneer Barry Miles before hooking up with alto-sax burner Richie Cole, appearing on two hot, boppish offerings in 1977's Alto Madness and 1978's Keeper of the Flame (both on Muse). In the early '80s, Juris immersed himself in acoustic guitar, performing duets with Larry Coryell and Biréli Lagrène, and by the late '80s he joined bassist Gary Peacock's group.

For the past 10 years Juris has been hitting the road hard with the Dave Liebman Group. "The band started out where we had keyboards," says Juris, "and then Dave decided that he just wanted to go with the guitar. So my original role was kind of like a second horn, and the guitar is very cool for that. But now that's completely changed to where I'm more of a colorist and chordal accompanist while also doing a bit of the second horn thing."