READING, PA – In A Celebration of Women in the Arts, the Reading Pops Orchestra will collaborate with Sherrie Maricle & FIVE PLAY on Sunday, May 17, at 3 p.m. at the Miller Center for the Arts.
From her drum set, Sherrie Maricle leads her quintet FIVE PLAY, The DIVA Jazz Orchestra, The DIVA Jazz Trio and co-leads the 3Divas.
From Carnegie Hall, she performs with The New York Pops and from celebrated stages everywhere. She is music director and drummer for Broadway star Maurice Hines. Maricle also is a busy freelance performer and a published composer/arranger.
With her bands, Maricle has performed at many of the world’s most acclaimed music venues and festivals from Lincoln Center to the Kennedy Center and the Hollywood Bowl to jazz festivals in Germany, Switzerland, France, Portugal, Ireland, England, Croatia, Japan, Vietnam and Israel. Additionally, DIVA was featured at the 2017 NEA Jazz Master’s Awards Ceremony.
Maricle has received the Mary Lou Williams-Kennedy Center Lifetime Achievement Award and The Kennedy Center Alliance Award for Outstanding Achievements in the Arts.
FIVE PLAY, comprised of DIVA’s rhythm section and two of its foremost soloists, features Maricle (music director/drums), Tomoko Ohno (piano), Noriko Ueda (bass),
Jami Dauber (trumpet) and Janelle Reichman (tenor sax/clarinet).
FIVE PLAY is rooted in the jazz tradition and is fueled and inspired by the members’ collective, creative vision to swing through the 21st century.
The quintet’s repertoire is comprised of innovative arrangements of classic and contemporary standards, as well as original music composed and arranged by band members. The group’s library was conceived to highlight the distinctive styles of each individual and to create a unique, exciting and powerful ensemble sound.
“My interest and admiration for Sherrie Maricle and the DIVA Jazz Orchestra was ignited in 2006 when I first heard the group perform a pops concert with the Binghamton Symphony in New York,” said Dr. Willis M. Rapp, the current conductor of the Pops and retired Music Department Chair at Kutztown University. “Ever since that time, Sherrie has been on my list for collaborating with the Reading Pops Orchestra.
“One of my former students, a female drummer, has also studied with Sherrie, and I have been able to witness first-hand the powerful role that female professional musicians provide as role models.
“We are pleased that Sherrie Maricle and FIVE PLAY, with their dynamic library of charts, will be an important part of the 2020 Celebration of Women in the Arts.”
The Reading Pops’ reputation as a dynamic orchestra has sprouted significantly in the rich topsoil of collaboration with a litany of accomplished artists in their Berks Jazz Fest and Sunday with the Pops concerts.
The Pops are a professional 55-piece orchestra made up of musicians from Berks County and surrounding counties who perform popular classics and classic pop. Conductor Wes Fisher established the group in 1969.
It was Fisher’s vision to create a first-class orchestra that would be committed to promoting the musical arts in Berks County through the maintenance of a professional orchestra for public concert performances. The Pops’ annual schedule features free community concerts at various outdoor venues as well as their popular Sunday with the Pops Series at the Miller Center.
J. Carl Borelli, Henry Gass, Frank Siekman, Lewis “Skip” Norcott, Paul Cusano and Charles Weiser succeeded Fisher and preceded Rapp as Pops conductors.
The orchestra performs throughout Berks County playing a wide variety of music, including recognizable classics and overtures of Von Suppe, Handel, Strauss, Dvorak, Bizet and Mozart.
They cover composers such as George Gershwin, Leonard Bernstein and Morton Gould along with popular tunes from Broadway musicals by Andrew Lloyd Webber, Rodgers and Hammerstein, Cole Porter and Irving Berlin.
The Pops also perform movie soundtracks by John Williams and others. The music of LeRoy Anderson the father of the Pops genre, often is featured as well.
The versatility of the musicians is evident when the woodwind section doubles on saxophones, creating the Pops Big Band. Rousing marches round out the repertoire of this lighter musical style.
The Pops have performed with such luminaries as The Four Freshmen, Rick Braun, Paquito D’Rivera, Ramsey Lewis, David Benoit, Chuck Mangione, Jim Brickman, John Pizzarelli, Nelson Rangell, New York Voices, City Rhythm Orchestra, Diane Schuur, Brian Bromberg, Ann Hampton Calloway, Eric Marienthal, Chuck Loeb, Jane Monheit, Cathy Chemi and Skip Stine, Livingston Taylor, The Brubeck Brothers Quartet, Minas, Andrew Neu and Keiko Matsui.
Tickets go on sale Wednesday, Feb. 19. They can be purchased online at https://millercenter.racc.edu/, by calling 610-607-6270 or at the Miller Center for the Arts box office. Box office hours are Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.
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