Our Annual Jazz Night features the ensemble and improvisational talents of our students and provides a valuable platform for this style of artistic expression. In the first set we will hear the Stage Bands. This year, we have the wonderful privilege of hearing the Dave Panichi Big Band perform in the second set of the concert.

Born and raised in Sydney, Dave moved in 1981 to New York, where he lived for 18 years. During this time, Dave performed with a multitude of notable artists including, the Buddy Rich Big Band, Toshiko Akiyoshi, Blood Sweat & Tears, Frankie Valli, Slide Hampton, Bob Mintzer, Maria Schneider, Frank Sinatra, Sarah Vaughan, Joe Williams, Aretha Franklin, The O’Jays, Mel Tormé, Peabo Bryson, Dave Liebman, Mulgrew Miller and Marc Copland to name a few.

In 2000, Dave returned to Sydney where he remains active in performing, teaching, recording, arranging and composing. Infused with the exhilaration, rich flavours and influences of the two decades he spent living and working in New York, Dave’s original compositions and arrangements have been performed and recorded by, among many others, the Buddy Rich Big Band, The Village Vanguard Orchestra, Blood Sweat & Tears, James Morrison, The Jazzgroove Mothership Orchestra (JMO), Ralph Pyl’s Sydney All-Star Big Band, Ten Part Invention and the Danish Radio Big Band.

Dave most recent album, Paradigm, compiles a new set of compositions recorded at the Bunker Studio with some of New York’s hottest jazz musicians. He returns from a recent trip from London to present his band at Cranbrook School. We can’t wait to hear this amazing ensemble performing some of the most modern Jazz compositions composed by one of Australia’s very best.