Tonight, some of the best jazz musicians at Iowa State will be performing a concert featuring the talents of its members, composer Matt Harris and guest soloist and composer, David Sharp.

This evening at 7:30, both of ISU’s jazz bands will be performing several tunes with Sharp in the Recital Hall of the Music Building. Sharp is a saxophone player who is currently the coordinator of jazz studies at the University of Nebraska. He was trained at the University of Miami School of Music.

Jazz Band I will open the concert with two pieces: “Lucky Southern” by Keith Jarret and “Coral” by Sharp, both under the watchful eye of the groups’ director James Bovinette.

Iowa State’s Jazz Ensemble II will then demonstrate its talents on Sharp’s “On the Westside” and Matt Harris’ “Potato Blues” and “Otravez.” This group will also be playing several modern arrangements of some more traditional jazz pieces, including Don Shamber’s arrangement of Jule Styne’s “Time After Time” and Ian McDougall’s version of Thelonious Monk’s “Well You Needn’t.”

After the second jazz band has finished its portion of the concert, the first jazz group will return to finish the evening’s entertainment. It is scheduled to play another Harris piece called “Up for Air,” featuring the saxophone section, and Charles Mingus and Sharp’s joint effort, “Duke Ellington’s Sound of Love.”

It will also be continuing the second jazz group’s pattern of playing arrangements of well-known jazz melodies. The band will finish the evening with Frank Mantooth’s version of George Gershwin’s “Summertime” and Dean Randall’s revision of The Brecker Brothers’ “Grease Piece,” which features the sax section and bassist Byron Stevens.

“We are going to be playing a lot of funk and non-traditional swing music,” Bovinette said. “The pieces tend to be very fusion-oriented.”

“We will be playing a wide variety of contemporary and standard swing music,” Sharp added.

Even though Sharp composed several of the tunes that will be played, he said being a guest soloist on his pieces would be “kind of new” since he has only played section parts rather than solo parts. He said that this is especially the case with his tune “Coral,” which features flugelhorn player James Campbell.

“I’ve always particularly liked but I’ve never had a chance to play the solo part,” Sharp said.

Overall, Sharp seems optimistic about the concert. “It’s going to be fun. When I am working with the students, I get to learn a lot, so it good for me too,” Sharp said. “In the end I learn from them and they learn from me, and we have a lot of fun.”