The Mile High Jazz Band will be joined by singer Jakki Ford, six award-winning poets and readers, and guest singer June Joplin, for an evening of big-band jazz and poetry on Tuesday, December 14, 2021, from 7:30 to 9:30 p.m., at the Brewery Arts Center Performance Hall, 511 W. King Street in Carson City. 

Poets and readers are Rita Geil (shown below), Susan Sara Priest, Timothy Rhodes, Wayne Carlson, Terri Breeden, and Ursula Carlson. Each poem will be followed by a performance of a tune by the band, several featuring Jakki Ford. Many of the tunes are festive holiday favorites.

General admission tickets are $12 and can be purchased in advance here TICKETS, or at the door. Your receipt is your ticket. Masks are required.

Pianist and bandleader David Bugli said, “We are keeping this in the holiday tradition, and also will feature some non-holiday songs suggested by the poems and the theme, ‘Train of Thought.’ We’d like to tell you the tunes we will be playing, but that would spoil the fun of the audience making the connections between the poems and the tunes that follow them. You need to be there to experience it.”

Solos will be performed by trumpeters Bill Melendres and Karl Rinder, trombonist Dominic Van Orman, saxophonists Rich Davis and Jacob Richetta, and others.

Mile High Jazz Band is supported in part by a grant from the Nevada Arts Council and the National Endowment for the Arts and by private donations. The Governor’s Office of Economic Development provided additional support through its Nevada Pandemic Emergency Technical Support (PETS) Grant for 2021. For information about the band and its activities, see milehighjazz.com.