Tuesday, March 6, 6:30 p.m.
Moline Public Library, 3210 41st Street, Moline IL
Friday, March 9, 7 p.m.
Pleasant Valley High School, 604 Belmont Road, Bettendorf IA
The latest guest musician and educator in Quad City Arts' Visiting Artist Series, the noted pianist, composer, recording artist, and former Black Hawk College instructor Corey Kendrick will meet with area students and also perform locally in a pair of concerts on March 6 and 9, treating audiences to the talents that led Downbeat Magazine to call Kendrick a “very accomplished, highly gifted jazz pianist,” and IDigJazz.com to deem him “a dynamic interpreter of standards.”
Kendrick received his Master's in Jazz Studies from Michigan State University in 2015, and holds a Bachelor's in Liberal Studies from Southern Illinois University Edwardsville. As an educator, he taught improvisation, jazz-piano lab, and applied-jazz piano lessons as a Graduate Assistant at Michigan State University from 2013 to 2015, and served on the faculty at the 2014 MSU Big Band Symposium and, locally, the 2013 Black Hawk College Summer Jazz Camp. Kendrick was also an adjunct instructor at Black Hawk from 2012 to 2013, where he taught Applied Jazz Piano and Jazz Combo, and coordinated the 21st Annual BHC Jazz Festival in 2013.
Among Kendrick's notable musical accomplishments, he has toured internationally with Etienne Charles' Creole Soul and regionally with the Rodney Whitaker Quintet, and has performed alongside greats such as Jimmy Cobb, Marquis Hill, Wycliffe Gordon, and Robin Eubanks. His first album Rootless, meanwhile, was released in June of 2016, leading Jazz Times to call the work “a debut that stands among the finest albums of the year,” and the artist himself declared “a brilliant young pianist and composer” whose “sense of harmony and melody is something innovative with not only a little adventurousness but, dare I say, bravado.”
Corey Kendrick's March 6 performance at the Moline Public Library starts at 6:30 p.m., his official public performance at Pleasant Valley High School takes place at 7 p.m. on March 9, and admission to both events is free, though donations are encouraged. For more information on the Visiting Artist Series, call (309)793-1213 or visit QuadCityArts.com.
