CITYFOLK

Without Cityfolk, our students simply would not have the opportunity to make a
meaningful connection with artists of this stature. It makes a real difference for our kids.”
-Joy Jones, Director of Bands, Cleveland School for the Arts,
Horace Mann School and Wogoman Elementary School

Exploring cultures from around the world and learning about what makes the Miami Valley region completely unique has been at the center of Cityfolk's year-round dedication to educational programs. Our skills-based efforts have connected students with the world's greatest jazz artists and make a difference in the lives of young musicians.

Cityfolk celebrates the music of jazz pioneer Jelly Roll Morton in November 2011. Two concerts--a solo concert by pianist Aaron Diehl on November 12 and a concert featuring pianist James Dapogny guesting with Dave Greer's Classic Jazz Stompers on November 19 will bookend the celebration. Funding for the workshops and performances has been provided by the Isabel Herbst Fund of the Dayton Foundation.

There will also be educational activities focusing on Morton's life, piano style and the music he created. These workshops are aimed at music students but are open to the public. The first workshop will be a Centerville High School on Thursday, November 17 from 3 - 5 PM and the second will be at the University of Dayton on Friday, November 18 from 2 - 4 PM.

The workshops will be lead by pianist James Dapogny, an authority on the music of Jelly Roll Morton. As soloist and as band leader he has recorded two albums of Morton's music and he is editing for publication Morton’s five existing big band arrangements from the late 1930s and a volume of the unknown pieces—songs and piano music— left among Morton’s papers. He is author-editor of the Smithsonian Institution-Hal B. Leonard publication, Ferdinand 'Jelly Roll' Morton: The Collected Piano Music, transcriptions into musical notation of nearly forty complete Morton piano-solo recordings, with relevant parts of others and a few pieces edited from printed music. Professor Emeritus of Music at the University of Michigan, Dapogny maintained his careers as jazz pianist and bandleader and as jazz scholar during his forty years of teaching at the university. His touring group, James Dapogny’s Chicago Jazz Band, has made several albums, one nominated for a Grammy. Apart from his work with Morton’s music, Dapogny also found and restored to performable condition from remaining fragments pianist James P. Johnson’s two 1930s operas, DE ORGANIZER, libretto by Langston Hughes, and THE DREAMY KID, libretto by Eugene O’Neill.