The Elon University Jazz Ensemble, under the direction of associate professor Jon Metzger, completed this month a performance tour of The Netherlands, Germany and Denmark. The 18-piece jazz ensemble played at international festivals and schools, gave jazz improvisation workshops, and showed their versatility by also performing two classical music chamber concerts.
Highlights of the tour included playing for more than 5,000 jazz fans at the Darling Market in Schevenigen outside of The Hague and performing a classical chamber music concert at the German Emigration Museum in Bremenhaven.
The ensemble also performed for more than students at the International School of Hamburg and for U.S. Consul General Karen Johnson and invited foreign diplomats, dignitaries and journalists at the U.S. Embassy in Hamburg, Germany.
“You are outstanding ambassadors for your university and our American culture, and through cultural exchanges like this one, you are doing more for international relations than all of us combined,” Johnson told the musicians.
The ensemble gave a jazz improvisation workshop at the Roskilde Music School outside of Copenhagen and received a standing ovation and two requests for encores at the Roskilde Jazz Days Festival.
“The ensemble members were excellent representatives of their jazz studies program, their American music, and themselves,” Metzger said. “They will always remember what happened, how they performed, and how they were received. They worked very hard for this opportunity, and I’m sure our Elon community will join me in being very proud of what they have accomplished.”