The Redlands Symphony offers an evening of traditional holiday favorites performed in the style of Benny Goodman and Tommy Dorsey as A Big Band Christmas Jam takes over the stage at Memorial Chapel on Saturday, December 11, 2021, featuring vocalist, Alexis Morrast. Co-conductors, Marshall Hawkins and Gregory Robbins will lead the orchestra. The concert begins at 8 PM. Doors open at 6:30 PM. This performance will be presented without intermission. Single tickets start at $18 and are available online or by calling the box office at (909) 587-5565. This concert is sponsored in part by a generous gift from Vaughn and Ann Bryan.
“At the Redlands Symphony, we do things a little differently," according to Ransom Wilson, the orchestra’s Music Director and Conductor, “Our holiday concert this year features all your favorites… but in Swing Era arrangements for Jazz Band! Add to that the vocal talents of Jazz at Lincoln Center’s own Alexis Morrast and you have a winning evening of music that shouldn’t be missed.”
Concert goers will enjoy the familiar sounds of traditional seasonal favorites like Silver Bells, Sleigh Ride, Let It Snow, The Christmas Song (Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire), and White Christmas, among others, all presented with a big band sound.
All concert goers – including musicians and symphony staff – will be required to be fully vaccinated and wear face coverings at the concert. Vaccination status and identification will be checked at the door. Those who have not been fully vaccinated, must show proof of a negative COVID test taken within 72 hours of the performance and wear a mask throughout the concert. The Symphony’s complete health and safety guidelines are available at redlandssymphony.com/experience.
Alexis Morrast, Vocalist
Alexis Morrast began singing at the age of three. Since that time, she has performed on several stages: the U.S. OPENS, NJPAC with Christian McBride and Dizzy's Coca-Cola Club with jazz legend Barry Harris. Her resounding tone has been heard on the Millennium Stage of The Kennedy Center, Lincoln Center, and abroad in Europe and Africa. The Coltrane Jazz Festival described Ms. Morrast’s talent this way: "The voice, the song, the stage presence is all astonishing!”
Alexis has worked with jazz greats like Greg Phillinganes, Steve Jordan, Dee Dee Bridgewater, Ray Chew, Lisa Fischer, Michael Feinstein, Christian McBride and toured with Wynton Marsalis and JLCO Band.
Ms. Morrast has been featured and interviewed in several articles from The Wall Street Journal, LA Times, and Forbes Magazine. She is not only a two-time winner of Amateur Night at The Apollo, also won "Showtime At the Apollo," which aired on Fox TV, hosted by Steve Harvey. Ms. Morrast is continuing her musical studies at the Berklee School of Music.
Marshall Hawkins & Gregory Robbins, Co-Conductors
Marshall Hawkins was fortunate to know from an early age that he was meant to be a musician. Born in 1939 in Washington, D.C., Marshall’s home was always full of music. His mother had a love of the classics, and Bach, Verde, and Puccini were his early companions, along with Nat Cole, Charlie Parker, and Jimmy Lunceford.
In 1964, Marshall decided to pick up the bass – and the rest is history. His first professional performance was with Betty Gray, the great Blues singer and pianist. In his mid-twenties, Shirley Horn, the amazing Jazz vocalist, chose Marshall as her bassist. He played with Shirley for five years, and then another life-changing opportunity presented itself.
In the late sixties, Marshall joined the Miles Davis quintet (with Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock, and Tony Williams) and toured throughout the United States. In 1971, Marshall organized the Marshall Hawkins Quintet and played in the Washington D.C. area until the late seventies when another opportunity appeared. Eddie Jefferson (the innovator of “vocalese”) invited Marshall to come to California to be his bassist. From this gig, Marshall was chosen to tour internationally with saxophonist Richie Cole. In the nineties, Marshall’s musical collaborators included Joe Henderson, Freddie Hubbard, Pharaoh Sanders, the Manhattan Transfer, and other Jazz greats.
In 1978, Marshall moved to Idyllwild, California, home of the internationally famous high school for the arts. In 1986, he founded the Jazz program at the Idyllwild Arts Academy, serving as the head of the Jazz Department until his retirement. The Idyllwild Arts Jazz program has earned top honors from the prestigious Berklee School of Music High School Jazz Festival. In addition to teaching Jazz as an art form, Marshall has mentored hundreds of talented young people who he still considers to be “his kids.”
American conductor Gregory Robbins enjoys a diverse career as a performer, educator, bassist, and arts advocate.
Maestro Robbins has held positions as Associate Conductor of the Greater Bridgeport Symphony, Music Director of the Delphi Chamber Orchestra, and Director of the Young Artists Philharmonic, a regional Youth Orchestra based in Greenwich, CT. In the Fall of 2019, he began an appointment as Conductor of the Idyllwild Arts Academy and Summer Orchestras in southern California. As a guest conductor, he has made recent appearances with the Redlands Symphony, Norwalk Youth Symphony, Yonkers Philharmonic, Pazardjik Symphony (Bulgaria) and Symphony by the Sea.
Robbins is active in the worlds of Jazz and Popular Music, recently conducting the debut album of the Assembly of Shadows Jazz Orchestra, which had several tracks nominated for GRAMMY awards. In 2018, he led a performance at Brooklyn Academy of Music featuring John Cale (formerly of Velvet Underground) and the Wordless Music Orchestra which gained wide acclaim from The New York Times, Rolling Stone, and The New Yorker. In 2018 he also led the Video Game Orchestra in a sold-out concert at Anime Boston. In the world of film and TV, he was the “conducting coach” for Gael Garcia Bernal, star of Amazon’s hit Mozart in the Jungle series.
As a chamber musician, Robbins has performed with such luminaries as David Frankl, Clive Greensmith, and Ani Kavafian, among others. He has also collaborated with members of the Tokyo, Linden, and Attacca string quartets for concerts at Carnegie Hall and the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival.
He received his formal training at Yale School of Music and Manhattan School of Music, and currently resides in Palm Springs, California.
The Symphony’s popular Pick-Four subscriptions are still available and begin at $69. Single tickets start at $18. Full details are available on the symphony website at www.redlandssymphony.com or by calling the box office at (909) 587-5565.
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