Event Details - 40 Years of Excellence: Honoring Frank Bongiorno

The Cape Fear Jazz Society Scholarship Concert
40 Years of Excellence: Honoring Frank Bongiorno

Co-sponsored by the Cape Fear Jazz Society
Proceeds from the concert benefit UNCW scholarships in jazz.

Alumni and jazz faculty perform at a special big band concert to honor Frank Bongiorno's 40 years of service to the UNCW Department of Music as he retires from UNCW. 

Tickets:
$25 general public
$5 students with valid UNCW or CFCC student IDs.
Available in advance; remaining tickets will be sold at the door starting one hour prior to performance.

A reception follows in the lobby of the Cultural Arts Building.

The concert is also being livestreamed on the department's YouTube channel.

40 years of UNCW excellence 
Frank Bongiorno has been UNCW professor of saxophone and jazz studies since 1982. During that time, his saxophone and jazz students have received national and international recognition by organizations such as Down Beat and Jazzfest USA. He has been recognized for contributions to teaching at UNCW, receiving the 2006 J. Marshall Crews Distinguished Faculty Award, the UNCW 2010 Distinguished Teaching Professorship Award, and the 2011 North Carolina Board of Governors Award for Excellence in Teaching.
     As an active recitalist, orchestral soloist, jazz artist, and clinician throughout the United States and abroad, Bongiorno’s performances have taken him to Berlin, Boston, Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, Chicago, Montreal, New York, Tokyo, Nuremberg, Montreux (Switzerland), Graz and Salzburg (Austria), Valencia (Spain), Montréal, Pesaro (Italy), and Ljubljana (Slovenia). He has performed solos with professional and college ensembles such as the Orchestra Filarmonica Marchigiana (Italy), Shreveport Symphony, Wilmington Symphony Orchestra, Auburn University Wind Ensemble, Williams College Jazz Ensemble, and Northern State College Jazz Ensemble. Bongiorno was also a member of the Ryoanji Duo (saxophone and classical guitar). Other performing credits include performances and supporting musician for the Four Tops, Carol Channing, Red Skelton, the North Carolina Symphony, Kenny Rogers, Frankie Vallie, Johnny Mathis, Steve Lawrence, and Edie Gorme, and for the soundtrack of Chasers.
     Bongiorno’s solo compact disc recordings include the critically acclaimed Classic Saxophone, Classic Saxophone, Vol. 2: Musica da camera, and Images, as a member of the Ryoanji Duo. The duo also recorded David Kechley’s Sea of Stones – a concerto for saxophone, guitar, and orchestra – with the Filharmonia Sudecka in Walbrzych, Poland, and was released with other orchestral works by Kechley. Bongiorno has recorded a jazz play-along CD of original jazz compositions; a master class CD on learning to improvise, using transcriptions for Jazz Player Magazine; a saxophone vibrato master class CD; and two sets of play-along duets for saxophone published in Saxophone Journal.
     Publications include classical saxophone transcriptions (Oboe Quartet in F Major, K. 370 by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Bachianas Brasileiras No. 5: Cantilena by Heitor Villa-Lobos); original compositions for jazz combo; paper presentations at the 18th annual International Association for Jazz Educators Conference and the second annual Boston Saxophone Workshop and Contemporary Woodwind Seminar; a DVD on basic reed maintenance for the Saxophonist, as well as more than 150 articles and reviews in publications such as the Saxophone Symposium, Saxophone Journal, North Carolina Music Educators Journal, the National Association of College Wind and Percussion Instructors, and Popular Musicians. His book, Basic Concepts and Strategies for the Developing Saxophonist, will be published in the spring of 2022.
     Bongiorno has served as membership director, treasurer and coordinating reviews editor for the North American Saxophone Alliance, and was featured in a front cover interview of the January/February 1993 issue of the Saxophone Journal, listed in the International Who’s Who in Music, Seventeenth Edition, and Outstanding Musicians of the 20th Century.

About the Cape Fear Jazz Society