Notoriety Performance - Wednesday Sept. 20 - 7:30pm
Jazz Outreach Initiative brings the best big band jazz entertainment to Downtown Las Vegas through the city's hottest big band, the JOI Jazz Orchestra! Wednesday, September 20, the JJO welcomes jazz trumpet master MIKE VAX as featured guest artist! Vax will perform four songs with the JJO, including
"Vax Attacks," "San Miguel," "What a Wonderful World," and the "Theme from Ice Castles."
JOI will also host Mike Vax as a clinician for its Las Vegas Youth Jazz Orchestra at their rehearsal studio on the campus of College of Southern Nevada - E Cheyenne's Department of Music where they rehearse and attend JOI taught Jazz Language and other classes on Sunday afternoons. JOI has presented dozens of the world's greatest jazz musicians and educators to the LVYJO and has even arranged free or sponsored private lessons for LVYJO band members.
Mike Vax is an International Artist for the Warburton Company. He is also a Summit Records recording artist. Mr. Vax performs exclusively on Warburton trumpets, cornets, flugelhorns and mouthpieces. He has played lead and solo trumpet with the Stan Kenton Orchestra, the Clark Terry Big Bad Band, and the U.S. Navy Show Band.
Mike has also performed and/or recorded with such greats as Art Pepper, Gene Krupa, Cab Calloway, Al Grey, Freddy Hubbard, John Handy, Don Ellis, Don Jacoby, Louie Bellson, Joe Williams, Anita O’Day, June Christy, Barbara McNair, the Four Freshmen, The Glenn Miller, Harry James, and Jimmy Dorsey Orchestras, the Beverly Hills Unlisted Jazz Band, and the Dukes of Dixieland in New Orleans. He has appeared as guest lead trumpet and soloist with symphony pops orchestras around the United States, and in Europe, as well as the All-American Collegiate Orchestra at Disneyworld.
As a recording musician, he has performed on more than 75 albums, including 20 under his own name. He is the founder and Chairman of the Board of Friends of Big Band Jazz, a 501c3 nonprofit corporation that has given over $65,000 in scholarships to jazz camps, funds to jazz programs in schools, donations to help musicians in need, and a donation to Habitat for Humanity for the Musicians Village in New Orleans.
Mike is also founder and director of the Prescott Jazz Summit, an annual jazz festival in Prescott, Arizona. Currently he is leading his own groups: The Stan Kenton Legacy Orchestra, The Mike Vax Big Band, TRPTS (Trumpets), The Mike Vax-Ron Romm Collaboration, The Great American Jazz Band, and the Mike Vax Quartet, Quintet and Sextet.
Mike has done workshops and concerts for over 3000 high schools, colleges and universities all around the world over the past 50 years. He has presented clinics at many state music conventions including California, Oregon, Arizona, Washington, Louisiana, Tennessee, Florida, Idaho, Utah, Arkansas, and Texas. Mike as also done clinics at such national conventions as: MENC, International Trumpet Guild, IAJE, JEN and others. He is very active as a clinician and soloist in both the classical and jazz idioms. He has written articles for such magazines as: The Instrumentalist, The Brass Herald, The ITG Journal, The IAJE Journal, and the Texas Jazz Educators Journal.