Holy Cross Honors Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. With an Evening of Jazz and Blues

WORCESTER, Mass. – The College of the Holy Cross presents Blues on the Hill: An Evening of Jazz and Blues with 2120 South Michigan Avenue Featuring Sweet Willie D and Blue Champagne  on Saturday, Jan. 23 at 7 p.m. in the Hogan Campus Center Ballroom. The concert, in honor of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, will benefit relief efforts in Haiti. It is free and open to the public; voluntary donations will be accepted at the door and will be sent to the Jesuit Refugee Services.

2120 South Michigan Avenue is a five-piece blues band, who takes its name from the Chicago address of Chess Records, the studio where Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Little Walter Jacobs and others recorded the great songs of the blues. They play the blues styles of Chicago, Texas and Memphis, as well as R&B classics and ballads. In the same set you might hear both "Fever" and "Born in Chicago;" Jerry Lee Lewis’ "Great Balls Of Fire" plus the classic "Mystery Train;" Sam Cooke's "Bring It on Home to Me" followed by the Memphis sound of "Next Time You See Me" and the Texas T-Birds’ sound of "Rock With Me Tonight."

Blue Champagne, Worcester’s newest, blue-est, and widest-ranging jazz combo offers startling new takes on everything from Miles, Monk, and the Duke to Brazilian sambas and Eric Clapton. Rita “Sweet Lorraine” DiCarlo has sung in venues up and down the East coast, from Miami Beach to Harlem's famed Cotton Club to Tanglewood. Reed man Noel "Dr. Soul" Cary (professor of history at the College) grew up in San Francisco, where he played with Tonight Show trumpeter Doc Severinsen and listened to all the greats at Fillmore West. Gareth “Goldfingers” Roberts (associate professor of mathematics at the College) started as a trombonist before starring as a pianist with Boston's Pink Mindys. Big bad Brian “Downtown” Newark has played bass in bands "from Mass. to Maine and back again." And versatile drummer Rick “The Stick” McCarthy has been behind the kit for innumerable local bands and genres for over three decades.

The concert is sponsored by Joanna E. Ziegler, Edward A. O’Rorke Professor in the Liberal Arts and professor and chair of the visual arts department and the multicultural education office.