Barbara Rosene New York City vocal sensation returns to BLU Jazz+ for a swingin' evening of Great American Songbook standards, holiday classics, and much more! Featuring Barbara Rosene, Tom Roberts, Dan Heasley.

Barbara Rosene is a passionate interpreter of American popular music. Spending much of the year performing internationally as the featured singer with the legendary Harry James Orchestra, Barbara offers up her niche brand of vocal jazz with a stylized spin on the great music of the 1920s, 30s and beyond.
 
In her established career she has shared stages with jazz icons, performing internationally with The Harry James Orchestra, Vince Giordano and The Nighthawks, the late Les Paul at New York’s Iridium Jazz Club, The Woody Allen Band, at The Carlyle Hotel, as well as directing her own New Yorkers, and as guest artist with orchestras and in festivals across the world. She has played such venues as The Iridium, Lincoln Center’s Rose Hall, The Montreal Jazz Festival, Night Town (Cleveland), Blues Alley (DC), The Arizona Music Festival, Jazz Amarinois, and The Hotel Villa Flori, Lake Como.
 

“No one evokes more vividly the music of the great singers of the 1920s than Barbara Rosene…”
– Wall Street Journal

 
Barbara has been featured on Judy Carmichael’s NPR program ”Jazz Inspired”, and recently on NPR’s “Hot Jazz Saturday Night.” She has been recognized by Backstage Magazine (Bistro Award, 2006), “Jazz Improv Magazine”, and is featured in Scott Yanow’s “Great Jazz Singers.”
 
Don’t miss this opportunity to hear Barbara right here in Historic Downtown Akron at Northeast Ohio’s premier destination for live jazz, fine food & spirits – BLU Jazz+!
 

About Barbara Rosene

Barbara Rosene has built an unequalled reputation for interpreting the great music of the 1920s and 30s and 40s. She is a passionate vocalist whose interpretations uncover the richness of jazz classics through the subtle, skilled delivery of one truly in love with the genre she sings.
 
Rosene gives voice to songs in ways that are both gracefully provocative and warmly welcoming. Few singers have her feel for classic material, from all eras of Jazz, interpreting the music with not only a full understanding and love of the original time period but with the rare ability to make the material sound fresh and emotionally relevant today.
 
In her established career she has shared stages with jazz icons, performing internationally with The Harry James Orchestra, Vince Giordano and The Nighthawks, the late Les Paul at New York’s Iridium Jazz Club, The Woody Allen Band, at The Carlyle Hotel, as well as directing her own New Yorkers, and as guest artist with orchestras and in festivals across the world. She has played such venues as The Iridium, Lincoln Center’s Rose Hall, The Montreal Jazz Festival, Night Town (Cleveland), Blues Alley (DC), The Arizona Music Festival, Jazz Amarinois, and The Hotel Villa Flori, Lake Como.
 
Barbara has been featured on Judy Carmichael’s NPR program ”Jazz Inspired”, and recently on NPR’s “Hot Jazz Saturday Night.” She has been recognized by Backstage Magazine (Bistro Award, 2006), “Jazz Improv Magazine”, and is featured in Scott Yanow’s “Great Jazz Singers.”
 
Rosene is personally committed to the significance of jazz music in American Popular Song and in America’s roots and spirit. Finding the soul of a song and linking its heart and expression with her own story brings this seductive blonde singer the satisfaction of a career well-spent. Recently she has begun lecturing on The Tin Pan Alley composers and early women jazz singers.
 
“Do what thrills you. Do what has meaning,” says Rosene, genuinely. “One thing I know is that it really is a privilege to perform. When someone is touched or broadened by something you have given them it is a gift to be able to give back to the world in that way.”
 
Barbara’s CDs include several on the Stomp Off label, all of which pay homage to the great composers and vocalists of the 1920s and 30s. Including “Nice and Naughty”, a collection of double entendre tunes, which features Conal Fowkes who’s voice and piano stylings as Cole Porter, were featured in “Midnight In Paris”. Vince Giordano and The Nighthawks ( Boardwalk Empire) collaborated on Barbara’s first CD entitled “Deep Night”.
 
Will Friedwald, author of Jazz Singing and Sinatra! has written: “No one evokes more vividly the music of the great singers of the 1920s than Barbara Rosene.”
 
Barbara’s CDs include releases on the Blues Back, Arbor’s and Azica labels.
 

About Tom Roberts

Pianist, composer, and arranger Tom Roberts is one of the leading exponents of early jazz piano in the world today (as stated by Ricardo Sciavales in The Heart and Soul of Stride, Blues, and Swing Piano).
 
He has performed on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, and A Prairie Home Companion with Garrison Kiellor. He was the featured pianist at the International Stride Piano Summit in Zurich, Switzerland 2001 and 2009. Tom was pianist for Vince Giordano and the Nighthawks in New York City (recent Grammy winners for the soundtrack to Boardwalk Empire) and pianist and musical director for Leon Redbone for six years. Tom has performed twice at New York’s Carnegie Hall in 2003, once with Skitch Henderson and the New York Pops. He was featured in 2003 in solo with Dick Hyman at the prestigious Jazz In July series at New York’s 92nd St. Y. Tom has performed multiple times at The New Orleans Jazz and Heritage festival including a solo performance at The Professor Longhair Society’s Piano Night At Tipitina’s. He has performed throughout Europe as a member of multiple ensembles from New Orleans.
 
Tom has composed new musical scores for The Charlie Chaplin films One A.M. and The Rink through a commission from The Pittsburgh Symphony. The scores were premiered at The Leopold Mozart Conservatory in Augsburg Germany and then performed in Pittsburgh at Heinz Hall in May 2012 as part of the Pittsburgh Symphony Paris Festival The City of Light. He has completed a score for a newly restored version of The Pawnshop which was premiered at The Hollywood Theater as part of the centennial celebrations for the 100th anniversary of Chaplin’s first films. At the same event he premiered another new score for Chaplin’s first appearance as the iconic Little Tramp in “Kid Auto Races at Venice CA.” He orchestrated this same work which was performed in 2014 by The Washington Symphony Orchestra.
 
In 2012 he composed a new score for the Gloria Swanson film Stage Struck, performed at The Andy Warhol Museum as part of the “Unseen Treasures from The George Eastman House” series and November of 2013 saw the premiere of his new score for the Roscoe “Fatty: Arbuckle film, “Special Delivery” also for The Eastman Hoise series at The Warhol in 2013. He has recently completed and performed a new score for the Harry Langdon 1926 film, “Tramp, Tramp, Tramp” which was premiered at The Andy Warhol museum this past September.
 
Tom has composed music for two films by The Allegheny City Society. He also composed a large scale choral work based on the poetry of Langston Hughes which was performed by The Bach Choir of Pittsburgh.
 
As an arranger, Tom has arranged and performed the music for the soundtrack of Martin Scorsese’s film The Aviator, starring Leonardo di Caprio. for the syndicated PRI show Riverwalk Jazz, Live from the Landing with the Jim Cullum Jazz Band, and a number of pieces for Wynton Marsalis and The Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra for a concert of the music of Louis Armstrong. A number of his arrangements were also featured at the prestigious Jazz in July with Dick Hyman at Manhattan’s 92nd St Y for the centennial commemorations of Bix Beiderbecke, Joe Venuti and Benny Goodman.
 
In 2008 for the 250th anniversary of the founding of Pittsburgh, he arranged Oscar Levant’s Blame It On My Youth and a medley of Earl Hines compositions for The Pittsburgh Concert Chorale. In 2012 he arranged music for the Pittsburgh Jewish Music Festival including settings of Scott Joplin and Louis Armstrong re-imagined from a Jewish perspective.
 
Originally from Pittsburgh, Tom has lived and performed in New Orleans and in New York in Harlem. Tom has recorded over 40 compact discs . He has recorded with Leon Redbone, The Paragon Ragtime Orchestra, Rufus Wainwright, Martha Wainright, Loudon Wainright III and Cole Porter. No kidding! In 2004, Tom, along with Vince Giordano’s Nighthawks, recorded new orchestral backgrounds accompanying vocals recorded by Cole Porter in 1934 for the film DeLovely.
 
Besides his pianistic artistry Tom is a versatile music historian with special focus on the Early Jazz era. He has contributed articles for magazines such as Piano Today and is a frequent guest at National Public Radio. Recently he has researched the early years of jazz in Pittsburgh and presents a lecture entitled The Forgotten History of Pittsburgh Jazz: Pittsburgh in the Roaring Twenties.
 
Tom is the founder and conductor of the newly created Allegheny City Ragtime Orchestra“ an 11 piece ensemble comprising members of the Pittsburgh Symphony and opera and ballet orchestras. The ensemble performs authentic orchestrations from the ragtime era with a special focus on rediscovering and presenting the lost work of Pittsburgh ragtime composers.
 
In April 2015 Tom brought the critically acclaimed documentary, “Bayou Maharajah,” The Tragic Genius of James Booker“ to The Hollywood Theater. Lily Kleber’s film has been screened at prestigious film festivals throughout the world including the Film Society at Lincoln Center. Tom performed music by James Booker and his disciple Dr. John and acclaimed poet Terrance Hayes read before the screening.
 
Tom co curates the series “Silents, Please” at The Hollywood Theater in Dormont. This monthly film series presents classic silent film with live accompaniment from a variety of performers and ensembles ranging from the traditional to avant garde.
 
He frequently appears as a guest host on Ryhthm Sweet and Hot on 90.5 WESA.
 

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