The University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point�s 13^th annual Jazz Festival will feature performances by the Joe Lovano Quartet at noon and 7:30 p.m., Friday, Jan. 30 at the Sentry Theater. The UWSP Jazz Ensemble, under the direction of Mathew Buchman, assistant professor of music, will open for the quartet.

Tickets are $15 for adults and $12 for students at the UWSP Box Office in Room 103A of the University Center, 715-346-4100 or 800-838-3378. Visa, MasterCard or Discover cards are accepted. Tickets also can be purchased at the door or on the Internet at https://tickets.uwsp.edu/Wt3/. Proceeds will benefit the UWSP jazz program.

Middle and high school jazz ensembles from throughout the state will attend the all-day festival at UWSP. Students will participate in master classes with UWSP faculty and a clinic with Lovano. Verbal and videotaped feedback will be provided as will outstanding musicianship awards.

Lovano�s latest recording, "On This Day . . . At the Vanguard," marks his 22^nd album as leader, his 15^th for Blue Note and his third recording as a leader live at the Vanguard, after the double CD with two quartets, "1994�s Quartets: Live at the Village Vanguard." It�s also his first release with his nonet since his Grammy-winning "52nd Street Themes" in 2000.

The center of the New York jazz world is a small cellar room at the bottom of a steep staircase in New York�s Greenwich Village. The Village Vanguard has been home to great jazz performances for well over 50 years, and even if its doors permanently closed tomorrow, its legend is assured by its legacy: a long line of historic albums recorded there. For almost every player of consequence since the 1950s, recording live at the Vanguard has become a rite of passage.

For the 50-year-old Lovano who grew up in Cleveland diligently studying many of those albums, the Vanguard means all that and much more.

"As a young player growing up hearing all the classic recordings from the club -- especially the Sonny Rollins trio, the Coltrane groups and Bill Evans, then hearing Dexter Gordon live in that room -- it gave me a lot of things to reach for." Lovano said. "It�s like Carnegie Hall! I�ve played at the club with a lot of different groups, starting when I joined the Mel Lewis Jazz Orchestra and played Monday nights through the 80s into the early 90s. I started to play there as a leader around 1990. The Vanguard is like a home base for me in New York City now."

Lovano was trained at Boston�s Berklee College of Music that recognized him with its Distinguished Alumni Award in 1994, an honorary doctorate in 1998 and the first Gary Burton Chair for Jazz Performance in 2001. Named "Jazz Artist of the Year" three times by Down Beat magazine, he has received several Grammy nominations, winning in 2000 for Best Large Ensemble for "52^nd Street Themes."

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