Contemporary Arts Inc., in partnership with The Ward Center for the Arts, St. Paul’s School, presents The Carl Grubbs Jazz/String Ensemble in performance. Carl Grubbs, a recipient of a 2014 Ruby Artist Project Grant, has a distinguished career as an international recording artist, composer and educator. The Jazz/String ensemble will perform his original work The Inner Harbor Suite Revisited: A Tribute to Baltimore.

The concert will be held on Sunday, May 31, 2015 at 4pm at The Ward Center for the Arts of St. Paul’s School (11152 Falls Road, Brooklandville, MD 21022). Tickets are $20 General Admission, $15 for St. Paul’s School Faculty, and $5 for Students with School ID. Tickets can be ordered online atwww.instantseats.com/events/ContemporaryArts or purchased at the door. Free parking is available.

The Inner Harbor Suite is a musical love letter to the city of Baltimore, Carl’s home since 1980. Inspiration for The Inner Harbor Suite began in 1983, after he coordinated a concert series featuring international artists at the Inner Harbor Pratt Street Pavilion and coordinated accompanying workshops for these same artists at Southern High School. Carl was inspired by these experiences to begin writing new music. In 1995, the first performance of The Inner Harbor Suite took place at the Amphitheater in the Inner Harbor. In the intervening years, Carl spent time reworking and restructuring the piece, with major work culminating after receipt of a 2014 Rubys Artist Project Grant. The current version of The Inner Harbor Suite includes melodies, counter-melodies, blues elements of call-and-response, bebop rhythms, Afro-Cuban rhythms and avant-garde elements and features saxophones, strings, group improvisation, and ensemble performance.

This performance will feature a stellar group of top-ranked musicians: Carl Grubbs, saxophones, Eric Byrd, piano; Blake Meister, bass; John Lamkin III, drums; Eric Kennedy, percussion; Cleveland Chandler, violin; Samuel Thompson, violin; Daphne Benichou, viola and Kenneth Law, cello.

Carl has traveled around the world with the Julius Hemphill Sextet as well as his own Carl Grubbs Ensemble. In addition to heading several jazz programs at several area schools, including St. Paul’s School in Brooklandville, Maryland, where for twenty years he has served as Jazz Band Director, strengthening students skills in jazz performance and jazz improvisation, he is the co-founder and Artistic Director of Contemporary Arts, Inc., a non-profit arts organization that aims to preserve the art form of jazz through performance and education. Each year he conducts two jazz arts camps for children, ages 4 to 17, in Baltimore City and Howard County. Among his many awards are the 2009 Mary Sawyers Baker Prize, two grants from the National Endowment of the Arts, two Traditions Apprenticeships and the Traditions Project Grant from the Maryland State Arts Council, and a Rubys Artist Project Grant.

This project is supported by a Rubys Artist Project Grant from the Greater Baltimore Cultural Alliance, the Robert W. Deutsch Foundation, the Eddie C. & C. Sylvia Brown Family Fund, the William G. Baker, Jr. Memorial Fund (creators of the bakerartistsawards.org), the Citizens of Baltimore County, Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake and The Office of Promotion and the Arts, the Puffin Foundation, The Maryland State Arts Council and the National Endowment for the Arts. ###