On June 17, the United States Air Force Liberty Big Band collaborated with three legendary jazz faculty members from Boston’s Berklee College of Music in a concert at picturesque Christopher Columbus Park.
The Boston waterfront venue and the beautiful summer day provided a perfect backdrop for the Liberty Big Band to share the stage with trumpeter/composer Greg Hopkins, tenor saxophonist Bill Pierce, and trombonist/composer Phil Wilson. The three have served at Berklee for a combined total of over 90 years.
The artists were featured during the program in several selections. They opened up their set with Greg Hopkins’s big band rendition of Horace Silver’s Nutville, which Hopkins arranged for Buddy Rich and recorded on the album The Roar of ’74. The band also premiered a new signature tune penned by Phil Wilson entitled “Swing Liberty,” featuring the composer as trombone soloist. Wilson prefaced the selection by reminding the audience, “There is nothing sweeter than Liberty.”
The hugely successful event was the first outdoor concert of the season in Boston for the Air Force Band of Liberty, which is also a perennial favorite each summer at City Hall Plaza at the Dorothy Curran Wednesday Evenings at the Plaza series. |
