Fine & Performing Arts

Billy Childs, one of the most in-demand composers, arrangers and pianists in jazz, and his Jazz-Chamber Ensemble will take the stage Friday, April 24, at 8 p.m. in North Central’s acoustically perfect Wentz Concert Hall. Childs has been nominated for eight Grammy Awards and won two in 2006: Best Instrumental Composition for “Into the Light” for the Billy Childs ensemble release “Lyric” and Best Instrumental Arrangement Accompanying a Vocalist for his work with Chris Botti and Sting. Just announced in April, he was awarded a prestigious fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial. Childs will be recording with his Jazz-Chamber Ensemble and the Ying Quartet this spring and has also been co-commissioned by the Detroit Symphony, Boston Pops, Notre Dame Symphony and Oakland East Bay Symphony to compose a new violin concerto for Regina Carter. This piece will be premiered by the Detroit Symphony in January 2010.  

He has written works for a number of orchestras and recorded with such jazz greats as Freddie Hubbard, Dianne Reeves, Luciana Souza and Lou Rawls. “The Fierce Urgency of Now,” his musical version of various texts by Dr. Martin Luther King, was performed with Wynton Marsalis and the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra. He’s been commissioned twice by the Monterey Jazz Festival, first to write an extended piano concerto and then to arrange a set of original compositions for Bobby Hutcherson.  

Childs has performed with his own trio in Carnegie Hall and has worked on various commissions sponsored by, among others, the L. A. Philharmonic, the New Century Chamber Orchestra and the Dorian Wind Quintet, as well as the score to “Crazy As Hell,” a film directed by Eriq LaSalle. He has also produced the CD, “Rhythm Of Life” by Verve recording artist Claudia Acuna.

North Central College welcomes internationally acclaimed guitarist Petar Jankovic to perform at the College’s new concert hall. A rising star among the world’s top musicians, Jankovic displays artistic sensibility and deeply personal yet sophisticated abilities, making him one of the most pre-eminent guitarists of his generation.  

Jankovic will perform at 8 p.m. on Friday, Oct. 24, in Wentz Concert Hall at the College’s Fine Arts Center, 171 E. Chicago Ave. Tickets are $25/person; call the North Central College Box Office at 630-637-SHOW (7469) or visit www.northcentralcollege.edu/show.

Since beginning his professional music career in 1985, Jankovic has delighted audiences at the more than 40 concerts he performs each season and enlightened students in his master classes throughout Europe and the United States. He has released two albums “Romantico” in 1998, followed by “Bogdanovic, Brouwer, Dyens” in 2002. Born in Yugoslavia, Jankovic is a professor and coordinator for the guitar department at Indiana University-Jacobs School of Music in Bloomington, Ind.

Russian pianist and master of performance showmanship Yakov Kasman brings his artistic mastery to North Central College for a public concert on Saturday, Oct. 4, at 8 p.m. His performance will be held in Wentz Concert Hall in the College’s new Fine Arts Center, 171 E. Chicago Ave.  

Tickets are $35/person; call the North Central College Box Office at 630-637-SHOW (7469) or visit www.northcentralcollege.edu/show.

Since his American debut as the silver medalist at the 10th Van Cliburn International Piano Competition in 1997, Kasman has performed concerts in the United States, Russia, Europe and Asia, and appeared as soloist with more than 50 orchestras worldwide. An active chamber musician, he has performed piano concertos and recitals at numerous summer festivals and regularly gives master classes and serves as competition juror. Says the Boston Globe, “Not only does he have a huge sound, but he also has diabolical fleetness of fingers and pinpoint accuracy.” Kasman has 15 CD recordings. His latest, “Tchaikovsky,” was released in 2005 and received an R9 Classica/Repertoire Award. He performs works from all the great composers, from Beethoven, Brahms and Haydn to Mozart, Rachmaninoff and Schumann. In addition to his performance career, Kasman serves as professor of piano and artist-in-residence at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.