The Pellissippi State Community College Music Department will kick off its spring 2025 Concert Series on Thursday, February 13, 2025, with a performance by the Knoxville Jazz Youth Orchestra.
The honors band, an educational arm of the Knoxville Jazz Orchestra, will return to the Clayton Performing Arts Center on Pellissippi State’s Hardin Valley campus at 7 p.m., accompanied by guest artist Pat Harbison – a jazz trumpeter and professor emeritus of Jazz Studies at Indiana University.
“The Knoxville Jazz Youth Orchestra explores the repertoire of outstanding jazz ensembles, as well as the music of the Great American Songbook,” Knoxville Jazz Orchestra lead trombonist Tom Lundberg said. “The students are playing challenging music at an extremely high level of proficiency in various venues around the area.”
The Knoxville Jazz Youth Orchestra, helmed by Lundberg, has served the area for more than two decades, and is composed of nearly two dozen high school students from across East Tennessee, including from Oak Ridge, Maryville and Sevier County.
“The group offers students the opportunity to learn about and develop jazz improvisation skills,” said Lundberg, a former Pellissippi State instructor. “I encourage the community to attend and hear as well as see all the talent these students have to offer.”
Featured artist Harbison visits the Knoxville Jazz Youth Orchestra and Pellissippi from New Albany, Indiana. He has performed on six continents, recorded and released six CDs, written extensively about jazz and trumpet and taught jazz education in various capacities over the years.
Learn more about the spring 2025 Concert Series at Pellissippi here.
Pellissippi State Community College is a public community college based in Knox and Blount counties in Tennessee and operated by the Tennessee Board of Regents. The college operates four campuses: Hardin Valley, Blount County, Strawberry Plains and Magnolia Avenue.
