ACU Jazz Ensemble performs with Grammy Award winning saxophonist

Renowned saxophonist Jeff Coffin, three-time Grammy Award winning member of Bela Fleck & the Flecktones and the Dave Matthews Band, will join the ACU Jazz Ensemble for a concert Tuesday, Nov. 3, at 8 p.m. in Cullen Auditorium on the ACU campus. The performance is free and open to the public.

"It's almost impossible for all of us, students and faculty, to grow musically unless we're playing with and being challenged by superior musicians," said Derek Brown, director of jazz studies at ACU. "I can't think of a better a way to do that than by bringing in one of today's best saxophonists."

The performance will include a wide range of styles encompassing everything from jazz-rock fusion, to Latin, to a New Orleans march style and traditional swing, Brown said.

Coffin is known for sometimes playing alto and tenor sax simultaneously, as well as his extraordinary saxophone sound and technique of improvisation.

He has traveled the world with the Flecktones since 1997 and with the Dave Matthews Band since 2008, performing with a varied group of musicians. Some of those with whom he has shared the stage or the recording studio include Garth Brooks, Van Morrison, Brooks and Dunn, and Lynyrd Skynyrd.

Coffin has played on hundreds of recordings, and has performed around the world including a 2007 performance at Carnegie Hall.

"With the wide range of diverse and amazingly talented groups he's played with, Jeff Coffin is one of the only musicians today who can really pull off all of these different styles exceptionally well," said Brown. "He can't be confined to one style, and I think that's really important for our students to see."

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