FREDONIA - The Music of Benny Goodman, as performed by the Ortner-Roberts Trio, will be featured in a concert at the 1891 Fredonia Opera House on Friday at 8 p.m.
Goodman led one of the most popular musical groups in America in the 1930s. His Jan. 16, 1938, concert at New York's Carnegie Hall is described by critic Bruce Eder as "the single most important jazz or popular music concert in history - jazz's 'coming out' party to the world of 'respectable' music."
The Ortner-Roberts Trio features Tom Roberts on piano, Susanne Ortner-Roberts on clarinet and Tom Elrick on drums.
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The music of Benny Goodman will be performed by the Ortner-Roberts Trio on Friday at 8 p.m. at the Fredonia Opera House.
Roberts has performed on "The Tonight Show" and "A Prairie Home Companion" with Leon Redbone. He arranged and performed the music, with Vince Giordano and The Nighthawks, for the soundtrack of Martin Scorcese's film "The Aviator." He also has arranged music for the syndicated PRI show "Riverwalk Jazz, Live from the Landing with the Jim Cullum Jazz Band," and for Wynton Marsalis and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra. He also was the featured pianist at the International Stride Piano Summit in Zurich, Switzerland, in 2001 and 2009.
His wife, German clarinetist Susanne Ortner-Roberts, is internationally acclaimed as a soloist and as a member of the German Klezmer Quartet, Sing Your Soul. Ortner-Roberts is a graduate of the Leopold Mozart Conservancy and the University of Augsburg. She previously taught German literature, language and music. Following an invitation by the University of Pittsburgh in 2006, she has been accompanying Pittsburgh area Holocaust survivors at schools and universities, creating the musical framework for their stories.
Joining them will be drummer Elrick, who has been performing with various bands and musicians since the mid-1980s and is a familiar fixture on the Pittsburgh music scene.
The Music of Benny Goodman performance is sponsored by June and Barry Dietrich. Tickets to the performance are $15 ($13 for Opera House members) and may be purchased in person at the Opera House Box Office or by phone at 679-1891, Tuesday through Friday, from 1-5 p.m. They also may be purchased online at www.fredopera.org.