Jazz performance will reunite old friends at Hill Hall

Jazz musicians Mark Tonelli and Stephen Anderson met each other two decades ago while studying music at the University of North Texas, but it’s been seven years since they last saw each other. A performance at UNC on Sept. 26 will finally bring them back together. 

Anderson invited Tonelli to a guest artist concert, called the Mark Tonelli Quartet. The concert will be held on Sept. 26 at 7:30 p.m. in Hill Hall’s James and Susan Moeser Auditorium. 

Anderson, a professor of composition and jazz studies at UNC, said he is more than ready to see his old friend. 

“I’m happy to host him. He’s a great player,” Anderson said. “It’s just good to mix and match in terms of theories and ideas with people that are teaching things at other universities.” 

Tonelli, who works at Millikin University in Decatur, Illinois, as an assistant professor of music and the coordinator of guitar studies, has never been to Chapel Hill. 

“I’m excited to come there. What I’m bringing with me are my original compositions,” Tonelli said. “I’ve won awards for my compositions throughout the years, so other people have found my music worth listening to." 

Tonelli hopes part of the concert’s set list will include a never-before-heard, challenging piece that he’s just written. Tonelli also plans to perform some rock and pop music that people may not be expecting from a jazz concert, like that of Queen and David Bowie. 

“I’m going to try to choose music that people haven’t heard and some that they have heard, but maybe not in the way that we’re doing it,” Tonelli said. 

Tonelli said the set list won’t be decided until he arrives and is able to rehearse with the Carolina trio. 

One of the players that Tonelli is looking forward to collaborating with is Jason Foureman, a jazz bassist and lecturer in UNC's music department. Foureman has been collaborating with Anderson for the better part of a decade. 

“The trio (me, Steve and Dan) typically do a concert every fall,” Foureman said. 

Part of the excitement for Foureman is meeting a new musician, but he said he's most looking forward to putting on a show with his fellow artists. 

“Playing with Steve and Dan is like putting on your favorite set of pajamas out of the dryer on a cold day, you know what I mean? It just feels good,” Foureman said.

Dan Davis, an adjunct professor of jazz drumset and jazz history at UNC, said the improvisational nature of live jazz is what he finds most exciting about it.

“Jazz concerts feature improvisational music, so as an audience member, you don’t quite know what you’re going to get,” Davis said. “There are a lot of surprises that are only going to happen on that particular night, in that particular room, with that particular group of musicians.” 

Tonelli encourages anyone who is on the fence about attending or perhaps not interested in jazz to give the quartet a shot. 

“A lot of people don’t realize they’re going to like jazz until they hear it,” Tonelli said. “This isn’t your grandfather’s jazz or even your father’s jazz.” 

The concert is free to attend, and Tonelli said the music will be accessible for the Chapel Hill community.

“It will be a really high-level of musicianship that I think matches the high-level of academics at Chapel Hill,” Tonelli said. “I think it will be a concert for a Chapel Hill audience.”

@JohnnySobczak

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