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Performing Arts Showcase - Kalamazoo Concert Band: February 2026
Updated 1 day ago

The Kalamazoo Concert band performs "The Great American Songbook" with special guest vocalist, Jennifer Roberts. Conductor Thomas G. Evans led the band through a medley of Broadway showstoppers to open the program. Assistant conductor Brian Shetterly later performed a trombone duet arrangement of "Blue Moon." Roberts, a singer and actress with a musical theater and cabaret background, joined the band for several numbers from the Great American Songbook, including Duke Ellington's "It Don't Mean a Thing (If It Ain't Got That Swing)," Harold Arlen and Ted Koehler's "Stormy Weather," and Jimmy McHugh and Dorothy Fields' "I Can't Give You Anything But Love." She told the audience it was her first time performing with the Kalamazoo Concert Band. The band also performed a medley honoring choreographer Jerome Robbins' Broadway work, including music from "West Side Story," "The King and I," and "Fiddler on the Roof." Roberts later returned to sing George and Ira Gershwin's "They Can't Take That Away From Me" and other Gershwin standards, along with Irving Berlin's "Puttin' on the Ritz." The concert closed with Roberts performing "Feeling Good."