Jack Kleinsinger's "Highlights in Jazz," New York's longest running jazz series is pleased to present Keepers of the Flame featuring Dick Hyman, Vince Giordano and his Nighthawks, Marcus Belgrave Salute To Doc Cheatham and Special Guest Peter Cincotti on Thursday, May 12, 2005 8PM at the Tribeca Performing Arts Center.


Dick Hyman (born Mar 8, 1927 in New York, NY) is a versatile virtuoso pianist. He has investigated ragtime and the earliest periods of jazz and has researched and recorded the piano music of Scott Joplin, Jelly Roll Morton, James P. Johnson, Zez Confrey, Eubie Blake and Fats Waller. In addition to being an accomplished pianist, organist, arranger, music director, and composer his encyclopedic knowledge of jazz is featured on Dick Hyman's 100 Years Of Jazz Piano, a CD-ROM based on his frequent recital-lectures.  For his "Highlights in Jazz," appearance Dick will be a  'keeper of the flame' for the piano music of James P. Johnson (1891 - 1955), the grand-daddy of stride piano who composed "Carolina Shout", "You've Got To Be Modernistic", "Caprice Rag",  "Eccentricity", "Old Fashioned Love" and "Charleston".

Vince Giordano and his Nighthawks band are renowned on the New York scene for their commitment to preserving and authentically presenting 1920s and 1930s jazz. Each piece they perform is inspired by, and arranged from, original recordings from greats of the era. The 11-piece group has been featured on movie soundtracks including Ghost World, Cotton Club, Finding Forrester, Bloodhounds on Broadway, and most recently Martin Scorsese's Howard Hughes biopic, The Aviator.

Trumpeter Marcus Belgrave is a versatile performer who plays avant-garde and traditional New Orleans jazz, blues, and ragtime. Belgrave has performed with Ray Charles, Max Roach, Ella Fitzgerald, Charles Mingus, Tony Bennett, Sammy Davis Jr., and Dizzy Gillespie. For his "Highlights" appearance he will be saluting jazz trumpet great Doc Cheatham (1905- 1997) Doc Cheatham recorded with Ma Rainey and Billie Holiday, and, during the 1950s, he alternated playing with Dixieland and Latin bands. He was a sideman in several big bands in the 1920s and started to make a name for himself as an improviser in the 1960s. In 1980, Cheatham's career took off, and he became a fixture at music festivals and began to steadily release recordings, which include The 87 Years of Doc Cheatham and Doc Cheatham and Nicholas Payton.

Special guest Peter Cincotti (born July 11, 1983 in New York City), started tinkling the keys of a toy piano when he was three years old. By age 12 he was already appearing professionally. His first jazz concert appearances as a teenage was at "Highlights in Jazz". And at 18 he became the youngest performer to headline at the prestigious Oak Room of the Algonquin Hotel in New York City. In 2003 he was signed to Concord Records, and his self-titled debut album was produced by Phil Ramone. Being born and raised in Manhattan he was exposed to everything from rock concerts at Madison Square Garden to jazz clubs to Broadway shows. Cincotti bends the Great American Songbook into new and interesting shapes and like his mentor, Harry Connick, Jr., he can swing and sing everything from W.C. Handy's "St. Louis Blues" to Cole Porter's "I Love Paris", to Goffin and King's "Some Kind Of Wonderful". USA Today declared Peter "a prodigiously gifted pianist and an interpretive singer of considerable charm."

There will be a special surprise guest on this show.

This concert will take place at the Tribeca Performing Arts Center (Borough of Manhattan Community College),
199 Chambers Street (between Greenwich and West Street).
The tickets are $27.50, $25.00 for students.  They can be purchased at the theater box office or by calling
(212) 220-1460.Mai