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Jeff Haas Double Quartet performs in Dalton

Sept. 22, 2005

KALAMAZOO--The Donald P. Bullock Music Performance Institute at Western Michigan University presents the Jeff Haas Double Quartet performing "Ha Gersher Chai" (The Bridge Lives) at 8:15 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 28, in the Dalton Center Recital Hall.

General admission tickets are $10 and $5 for students and senior citizens and are available through the Miller Auditorium Ticket Office and at the door the evening of the performance.

Critically acclaimed "Ha Gersher Chai" portrays a significant social message about building bridges between cultures, generations and identities. Jazz pianist and composer Jeff Haas blends Jewish music and Jazz, offering "a path lit with originality." Haas conducts diversity workshops using music to promote tolerance and understanding about people from different cultures, races, and identities. This formal concert will include jazz quartet and string quartet and feature each as separate entities and together as a double quartet.

Haas, the son of Jewish immigrants, grew up in Detroit in a home rich with music in the Judaic and European traditions. He spent his teen years studying piano and music theory at the famed Hochschule fur Musik in Berlin, and went on to Michigan State University where he received his bachelor's degree in theory and composition and graduate degrees in theory and performance. He has spent the past 25 years researching music of Judaic origin and studying jazz composition and performance.

The Sept. 28 concert is the first of two performances highlighting the ways Middle Eastern music and musicians are advocating peace and tolerance. On Nov. 16, The Mosaic Trio and Dancer performs traditional instrumental music from the Arabic, Sephardic, Egyptian, Levantine, Turkish and Armenian repertoire.

For more information about the Jeff Haas Double Quartet, The Mosaic Trio and other performances sponsored by the Bullock Music Performance Institute, visit the Web at www.wmich.edu/mus_bpi.

Media contact: Kevin West, (269) 387-4678, kevin.west@wmich.edu

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