“Jazz on the Hill” to support Community Concert Hall Endowment Fund

Dinner/jazz concert on the stage set for Saturday, Sept. 22

Durango, CO – To help grow the endowment fund designed to maintain the Community Concert Hall at Fort Lewis College as the quality performance venue it is today, a special dinner/show – “Jazz on the Hill” – will be staged (literally on the Concert Hall stage) Saturday, Sept. 22, 2012.

Limited tickets, at $100 per person, are available for the event that will benefit the Russ and Bette Serzen Endowment Fund for Concert Hall Operations. Festivities begin at 6 p.m., with a 6:30 p.m. sit-down dinner on the Concert Hall stage. The jazz performance is set for 7 p.m. featuring the LEJ Trio led by percussionist Dr. Jonathan Latta, FLC assistant professor of music and director of percussion studies, with Lawrence Nass (piano) and Evan Suiter (bass), and top collegiate jazz students Brian Stoneback (tenor sax), James Olinger (guitar) and Sam Kelly (alto sax). The musicians perform to the dinner guests with their backs to the main (seated sections) of the hall.

“It’s a unique, intimate dinner and concert,” said Concert Hall Director Charles Leslie. “Very few community members have the opportunity to be on the Concert Hall stage, let alone enjoy dinner looking out into the hall from the vantage point of the professional performers who traditionally take the stage. It’s a fundraiser unlike any other.”

Early on in the life of the Community Concert Hall, founding director Gary Penington readily admitted he knew nothing about jazz. Thankfully Russ Serzen did. A gracious man who sported the trim build of the professional baseball player of his youth, Serzen would ease into Penington’s office and, with teenage enthusiasm, offer up names of rising young jazz stars or even established greats he knew would appeal to Durango’s fickle music sensibilities. With Serzen’s help, the Jazz on the Hill series was created, and continues today as a legacy and tribute to the Community Concert Hall patron whose life was taken far too early. Serzen’s wife Bette established the memorial endowment fund following his passing.
“The Concert Hall has presented at least two jazz events every year since it opened in 1997,” said Leslie, acknowledging Serzen’s integral role in keeping jazz in the Concert Hall line-up. “I believe we should always have jazz as part of our series as it is a truly American art form.”

The goal is to raise $1 million for the endowment fund over the next several years to create a regular monetary stream for the Concert Hall day-to-day operations. The fund augments the Concert Hall’s other revenue-generating efforts, including ticket sales, corporate sponsorships and individual memberships.

“With the recent cuts in higher education, fundraising and sales are more important than they ever have been in the history of the Concert Hall,” said Leslie.
Tickets for the Jazz on the Hill fundraising dinner ($100) are available on-line at www.durangoconcerts.com or by calling 970.247.7657, or at the Ticket Office inside the Durango Welcome Center at 8th St. and Main Ave. in Downtown Durango. Reservation deadline, Sept. 14 2012. All sales final.

The Community Concert Hall is a not-for-profit, multi-use performance venue located on the campus of Fort Lewis College. Its ability to bring a diverse spectrum of shows to Southwest Colorado is made possible through a partnership with the college, a state-supported, independent institution of higher education, and financial and in-kind contributions from generous members of the community.