David Amram’s 80th Birthday Bash!

Thursday, December 9, 2010 at 7:30 p.m., UMass Lowell, Durgin Concert Hall, 35 Wilder Street

(parking available in the Wilder Street lot at the corner of Broadway)

Free & Open to the Public

A musical birthday celebration of composer and multi-instrumentalist David Amram, featuring the University Orchestra, the New England Orchestra and the Lowell Youth Orchestra in an eclectic mix from Bach to Ellington and Amram, plus special guests, and more, led by conductor Kay G. Roberts.

David has been a great friend to Lowell and to the legacy of Jack Kerouac, having performed at many Kerouac festivals in the past ten years. This concert promises to be an extraordinary evening of music and merriment. The man is a music legend who has scored films, conducted orchestras, jammed with jazz greats, played at the White House, and has been made immortal in a Raffi song (“A peanut butter sandwich made with jam,/One for me and one for David Amram.”)

From Wikipedia:

“David Amram (born November 17, 1930) is an American composer, musician, conductor, and writer. As a classical composer and virtuoso performer, his integration of jazz (including being one of the first noted as an improvising jazz French hornist), ethnic and folk music has led him to work with the likes of Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk, Dizzy Gillespie, Lionel Hampton, Willie Nelson, Langston Hughes, Charles Mingus, Leonard Bernstein, Sir James Galway, Tito Puente, Mary Lou Williams, Joseph Papp, Arthur Miller, Miles Davis, Arturo Sandoval, Stan Getz, Pete Seeger, Elia Kazan, Odetta, Dustin Hoffman, Steve Allen, Machito, Earl “Fatha” Hines, Allen Ginsberg, Nina Simone, Gregory Corso, Bob Dylan, Steve Goodman, Hunter Thompson, Johnny Depp and Jack Kerouac throughout the course of his career. …

“David Amram has composed more than 100 orchestral and chamber music works, written many scores for Broadway theater and film, including the classic scores for the films Splendor in the Grass and The Manchurian Candidate; two operas, and the score for the landmark 1959 documentary Pull My Daisy, narrated by novelist Jack Kerouac. He is also the author of three books: the autobiography “Vibrations,” and the memoirs “Offbeat: Collaborating With Kerouac” and “Upbeat: Nine Lives of a Musical Cat.”

David and Willie Nelson at the Farm Aid Concert (web photo courtesy of davidamram.com)