Famed jazz scholar Morgenstern to visit Texas State

Internationally renowned jazz scholar Dan Morgenstern will visit Texas State University-San Marcos Feb. 5 and 6 to lecture and take part in a special tribute concert.

Morgenstern, the former editor of Downbeat magazine, will speak at 8 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 5, in the Alkek Library Teaching Theater on “Jazz and the National Endowment for the Arts: The Early Years.” As part of Texas State’s Common Experience on Civic Responsibility and the Legacy of LBJ, the lecture will focus on the creation of the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) by President Lyndon Johnson and the U.S. Congress in 1965.

Morgenstern, a seven-time Grammy Award winner for program notes and a 2007 NEA Jazz Master (the nation’s highest honor in jazz), will also be part of the Eddie Durham Tribute Concert and Celebration at 7 p.m. Friday, Feb. 6, in Evans Auditorium on the Texas State campus.

Together with performances by the U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command Jazz Band, featuring Count Basie saxophone and flute legend Frank Wess, and the Texas State Jazz Ensemble, Morgenstern will discuss Eddie Durham as a jazz pioneer and his significant contributions to jazz. Durham, who died in 1987, was born in San Marcos and won national and international acclaim as a jazz guitarist, trombonist, composer and arranger.

The Common Experience at Texas State is a year-long initiative designed to cultivate a common intellectual conversation across campus, to enhance student participation in the intellectual life of the campus and to foster a sense of community.