She has performed worldwide at venues such as The Montreaux Jazz Festival, Nice Jazz Festival, Pori Jazz Festival, Northsea Jazz Festival, the Blue Note in Tokyo, Quasimodo in Berlin, Marian's Jazzclub in Bern, Switzerland, and Spice of Life in London. In the States she has been a frequent performer at venues such as The Kennedy Center in Wash. D.C. and Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York.

"I'm interested in communicating with people through jazz, so I think that music has to swing and it has to have a groove in order to do that. If the music grooves, people will come, because everybody can connect to rhythm"-- 'Sweet' Sue Terry

“What people can expect to hear [on October 20] is a working band because my group plays every Tuesday night in Greenwich Village.” -- ‘Sweet’ Sue Terry

During a concert taped for NPR's "Billy Taylor's Jazz at the Kennedy Center," Terry displayed well-honed gifts for playing both alto and soprano in a variety of familiar but attractive settings. Her performances on alto, initially distinguished by a cool tone and fluid phrasing, quickly recharged the bop standards "Hot House" and "Star Eyes." She used the same horn to elegantly recast "All The Things You Are" in 3/4 time, to swing effortlessly through Frank Foster's "Shiny Stockings," and to underscore the bluesy swagger that was key to her interpretation of Horace Silver's "Sister Sadie."

When she picked up the soprano on "Lullaby of the Leaves," it quickly became clear that she was drawn to a soulful, rather than strident, sound on the temperamental horn.

Since the arrangements allowed plenty of solo space for Taylor and his trio mates -- bassist Chip Jackson and drummer Winard Harper -- Terry's contributions gave way to crisply executed and colorfully designed improvisations." -- Mike Joyce, The Washington Post

About Shemekia Copeland:
Since the 1999 release of he debut album Turn the Heat Up (recorded when she was 18), blues singer Shemekia Copeland has taken the music world by storm. She holds four W. C. Handy Awards, five Living Blues Awards, and a Grammy nomination. She has appeared before national audiences on Austin City Limits, Late Night with Conan O’Brien, the CBS Early Show and NPR’s Weekend Edition. She headlined the 2002 Chicago Blues Festival, whipping the crowd of 100,000 fans into a frenzy. Shemekia’s passion for singing, matched with her huge, blast-furnace voice gives her music the timeless power and foot stomping urgency of a very few greats who have come before her. The media has compared her to young Koko Taylor, Aretha Franklin, Etta James and Ruth Brown.

“Copeland burns white hot, singing with enough power to knock you flat on your back and enough purr to make you want to stay there.” – Austin Chronicle

“Shemekia Copeland sings urgently modern songs carved from the solid wood of her blues roots. Honest, masterful, and wrenchingly credible … she is as new as tomorrow’s paper and as ageless as the blues itself; this music could not be in better hands.” – Boston Globe

“Hot and haunting, Copeland doesn’t come across as an entertainer so much as a force of nature. The sound of her rafter-rattling voice—a dark, thundering alto—generates waves of energy and emotion. Impressive, fresh and modern, she has poise to match her power, and commands attention as few of her peers do.” – Washington Post

“Pure, beautifully unaffected and powerful” – Living Blues

“Wonderfully expressive singing … breathtaking performances that touch the heart.” -- Down Beat

"Alex Blake’s career has spanned countless styles of music. He has toured and recorded with so many great musicians: Dizzy Gillespie, Freddie Hubbard, Stan Getz, McCoy Tyner, The Last Poets, Max Roach, Art Blakey, Billy Cobham, The Manhattan Transfer, Pharaoh Sanders, Sun Ra, and Randy Weston.

"The Real Ambassadors" is named after Dave & Iola Brubeck's musical play of the same name, loosely based on the government's policy of sending jazz artists all over the world as Ambassadors of Good Will. Dianne sees her students as Ambassadors of Good Will, in their music, as well as their individual attributes. From it's inception in 1994, this choir has studied and performed a uniquely challenging repertoire of true jazz pieces from artists such as Dave Brubeck, Lambert, Hendricks and Ross, Count Basie, Horace Silver, Billy Strayhorn and Thelonius Monk. The current choir consists of academy high school students from 12 different school districts in Connecticut, ages 14 to 18.

From their first year in existence, The Real Ambassadors have won numerous awards, as well as been invited to perform at major functions. They have performed at the White House for former President and First Lady Clinton in 1996, Mayor Mike Peters' induction ceremony and farewell gala, The Bushnell, The Capitol Building, and for the Capitol Region Education Council. In 1999, the choir performed the title tune from the "The Real Ambassadors" at the 'Jazz by the Sea' jazz festival with veteran cast member, Jon Hendricks, and their director, Dianne Mower, who herself cut her 'jazz teeth' in a Lambert, Hendricks & Ross tribute group. In 2001, they performed with Jazz legend Dave Brubeck, and his sons, Chris and Dan. Dave credits the choir with bringing the music from the Real Ambassadors musical play back into the public eye by performing several tunes from it each year. Awards have included placing first at the Berklee Jazz Festival Competitions, & placing first at the Monterey Jazz Festival High School Competition.

In April, 2003, The Real Ambassadors won the Monterey Jazz Festival competition. As a result they were invited to perform the following September at the world renowned Monterey Jazz Festival. With Jon Hendricks, from the original 1962 Monterey cast "sitting in", they knocked the audience cold.

"Listening is still the key." — Jim Hall

Jim Hall, born in Buffalo, and educated at the Cleveland Institute of Music, moved to Los Angeles where he began to attract national, and then international, attention in the late 1950s. By 1960 Jim had arrived in New York to work with Sonny Rollins and Art Farmer, among others. His live and recorded collaborations with Bill Evans, Paul Desmond, and Ron Carter, are legendary.

Jim Hall's musical style has been in a state of continuous development throughout the course of his career—a career that to date has spanned more than five decades. But just as with advances in technology, medicine, and other fields, Jim's evolutionary twists and turns in this last decade have been swift. With each new concert tour and recording (more than a dozen new CDs since 1991) Jim reveals yet another facet of himself.

He views music as a way of bonding people together and crossing barriers, be they barriers of geography, ideology, religion, or other discriminations. In accepting the NEA Jazz Masters Fellowship award in January 2004, he said, “The women and men who have received this award in the past have spread peace and love throughout the world, something that governments might emulate. I am pleased to be one of the peacemakers.”

Seemingly oblivious to the accolades, Jim is a modest and unassuming man ... who continues to hone his craft while striving to probe the boundaries of the musical universe. And he is more than happy to share his explorations and discoveries with others. (excerpts from Sketches from PROS Folios: Jim Hall by Devra Hall)

"Jim Hall is the reigning master of the jazz guitar. This poetic player says more with fewer notes than any living improviser." -- The New Yorker

"A master of understatement, Hall is one of jazz's most respected improvisers, an artist who wields his guitar like a paintbrush, shaping and shading each note to achieve just the right hue and texture. Modest and soft-spoken, he has inspired two generations of jazz musicians with his vast harmonic knowledge and restless musical curiosity." -- Andrew Gilbert, San Jose Mercury News

"His work speaks as much to the human condition as any artist past or present, and if one looks and listens attentively, there are great rewards to be found there." -- Victor Magnani, All About Jazz

"Mr. Hall's dry-toned guitar playing with its discrete, deliberate notes and sliding chords works like a bluesy telegraph signal." -- Ben Ratliff, The New York Times

"Since 1955, Hall, jazz' most lyrical and harmonically fertile guitarist, has jousted with top jazz stars like Ella Fitzgerald and Sonny Rollins. And his approach has shaped a younger generation of guitar heroes, from Metheny to Bill Frisell." -- Gene Santoro, New York Daily News

"To play with Jim Hall is to play with a man who is a virtuoso, whose musicianship is wonderful." -- Itzhak Perlman

"Listening is still the key. If you can communicate your music in a clear way and keep your audience’s attention, you can take them just about anywhere you want to." -- Jim Hall

"Hall’s influence, both as a traditional and an innovating musician, has probably been felt more since 1960 than that of any guitarist since Charlie Christian and Django Reinhardt." – Leonard Feather, jazz historian

"A moody rendering of "Body and Soul" beautifully displayed Hall's very much intact mainstream ballad skills, which characterized his early work. But other pieces revealed Hall's diverse and probing musical imagination, eager -- in his quiet, self-possessed manner -- to explore new vistas, willing to wring a full palette of sounds from his guitar, from rich chordal clusters to dissonant sweeps across the fingerboard." -- Don Heckman, The Los Angeles Times

"My philosophy - even though I don't think about it consciously - is to include and be welcoming to the audience and then take them someplace they might not have expected to go, rather than to be off-putting from the first downbeat .. But in the course of an evening, we're liable to go in any direction." – Jim Hall quoted in The Los Angeles Times

Directions and Map
From Springfield and Points North:
Take I-91 South to Capitol Area Exit 29A (left exit). Take the second exit from the ramp, marked Prospect Street. Turn right onto Prospect. The back of the museum is on the left, one block up.

From New Haven and Points South:
Take I-91 North to Capitol Area Exit 29A (left exit). Take the second exit from the ramp, marked Prospect Street. Turn right onto Prospect. The back of the museum is on the left, one block up.

From New York and Points West:
Take I-84 East to Capitol Avenue Exit 48B. Turn left onto Capitol Avenue, and when it ends, turn left onto Main Street. The museum is on the right, two blocks up.

From Boston and Points East:
Take I-84 West to Downtown Hartford Exit 54 (left exit). Immediately after crossing the Founders Bridge, turn left onto Columbus Blvd. Turn right onto Arch Street, then right onto Prospect Street. The back of the museum is on the left, one block up.

From Route 4 and Northwestern Connecticut:
Follow Route 4 (Farmington Avenue) until it joins Asylum Street in Hartford. Follow Asylum as far as you can, then bear right onto Ford Street (by Bushnell Park). Go one block and turn left onto Pearl Street. Go four blocks and turn right onto Main Street. The museum is one block up, on the left.

From Route 2 and Southeastern Connecticut:
Take the Downtown Hartford Exit 54. Follow directions from I-84 westbound.

Free Parking:
Park in the Atheneum Parking Lot off Prospect St. or park on the street - all parking is free on weekends.

The Hartford Jazz Society would like to thank the following organizations whose financial support made this concert series and the master classes possible :

National Endowment for the Arts The Edward C. and Ann T. Roberts Foundation The Aetna Foundation Greater Hartford Arts Council New England Foundation for the Arts (Meet the Composer) NewAlliance Foundation The Knox Foundation The Lincoln Financial Foundation Connecticut Commission on Culture and Tourism The Fisher Foundation, Inc. The Joseph P. Stackpole Trust The Hartford Advocate