[Snow Date: Thursday, February 20, 2025 at 7:00 PM]

Alexis Cole Presents The Music of Gigi Gryce With Brandon McCune - piano Featuring Jazz Historian and Gigi Gryce biographer Noal Cohen to discuss Gigi’s life and career. 2025 is Gigi's centennial!

Registration is required as space is limited. 

Hear Gigi Gryce’s popular songs like Social Call and Music in the Air alongside many never before heard lyrics to his many lesser known gems!

Gigi Gryce was a saxophonist and composer who worked with some of the best-known names in jazz during the 1950s, including Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk, and Max Roach. His many compositions remain a part of the jazz repertoire today.

His remarkable rise from poverty led to conservatory studies and tours of Europe and Africa before he established himself as a fixture on the New York scene. His efforts as a music publisher were bold and groundbreaking, and his quiet, unassuming personality set him apart from most of his peers. In only a decade as a professional musician, he earned the respect and admiration of his colleagues and served as a mentor to numerous aspiring young players. Gryce’s sudden disappearance at the start of the 1960s left the jazz world wondering as to his fate. Few were aware of his change of identity and professional rebirth.

Jazz Historian Noal Cohen co-authored the only known biography of Gigi Gryce. Misinformation about Gryce abounds, and rumors have circulated for decades. Years of research and dozens of interviews were conducted for this book, resulting in a biography that finally tells the true story of this often overlooked figure and illuminates his contributions to one of the richest periods in jazz history.

Master musician and dedicated educator, Brandon McCune is a native of Chicago who was selected early on in his career through a national audition as a 1998-1999 U.S. Jazz Ambassador to Africa, where he traveled abroad representing the United States performing public and private concerts, master classes and workshops.

Brandon has not stopped or looked back ever since. As a professional musician— piano, organ, drums, trumpet, bass, vocals, and choir director— he has worked as a band leader, music director, or as a sideman for artists such as Abbey Lincoln, Terence Blanchard, Nneena Freelon, Betty Carter, Miki Howard,Wynton Marsalis, Bruce Williams, Chrisette Michele, Ted Dunbar, Larry Ridley, Russell Malone, Lenora Zenzalai Helm, Mark Gross, Antonio Hart and Orbert Davis.

In addition, Brandon’s dedication to the furtherance of the art form finds him enriching the lives of hundreds of young music students each year. He teaches music at Cicely Tyson School for the Performing Arts in East Orange, NJ and currently serves as Musical Director for all music and dance ministry programs at Union Baptist Church (Montclair, NJ).