Extravaganza: blast from past

This year’s Big Band Extravaganza is going to take some feeling. \nPat Harbison, IU professor of music, said this year’s selection of music, which is older, is an adjustment for the students, who have mainly been working with contemporary pieces. He said the students can already get the notes right, but they have to learn to get the feeling right. \n“I try to get their heads into it and have them imagine what it’s like to be their grandmothers or grandfathers going to the prom and digging this music,” Harbison said. “At one time, this music really was pop music.”\nThe IU Jacobs School of Music will host the annual Big Band Extravaganza featuring jazz ensembles lead by David N. Baker and Harbison. This year’s concert, “It Don’t Mean a Thing ... If It Ain’t Got That Swing,” will feature performances by guest singers Delores King Williams and Everett Greene. It will begin at 8 p.m. Saturday at the Musical Arts Center.\nHarbison, who has been involved with the Big Band Extravaganza for the last decade, said the event has been occurring for about 30 years. The concert has recently added professional guest singers who have high expectations of the students and audiences.\nWilliams is returning for her second year to sing with the IU jazz ensembles. She has performed in the Army band and currently sings with a political satire group called The Capitol Steps, but said she still enjoys singing at IU.\n“I love coming to Indiana,” Williams said. “Last year I did the Extravaganza and it was so much fun; the audiences are up on all their jazz, so we have to be ready.”\nThe concert will include everything from Miles Davis to “South Pacific.” Williams said she will be performing duets with Greene, but they have a few surprises they are saving for the show.\nGreene, an Emmy award-winning artist whose plentiful resume includes performing with the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra and for former President Bill Clinton at the Democratic Governors’ Association Dinner, will also be making a return performance this year.\n“When you get invited back a second time, either they enjoyed you or they ran out of other performers to ask,” Greene joked. “And I would like to think it’s the first.”\nGreene and Williams both emphasized their desire for the audience to enjoy the performance and get a feel for the music.\nWhat the audience experiences “depends on what generation they are coming from,” Harbison said. “IU students can do a little time travel and make the ’30s real through the music, and it will be a trip down memory lane for the older crowd.”