This is a past event.

This year's Don Keranen Memorial Jazz Festival is an incredible two-day mixtape of jazz that celebrates the legacy of Michigan Tech Jazz founder, Don Keranen. 

Saturday night's concert features New York City saxophonist, Caroline Davis, the Alumni Jazz Band and Jazz Lab Band. Check out Friday night's lineup. 

Watch Caroline Davis perform live at Jazz Gallery in New York

About Caroline Davis

Mobile since her birth in Singapore, composer, saxophonist, and artivist Caroline Davis’s music covers a wide range of styles, owed to her shifting environment as a child. As a leader, she has released six albums: Live Work & Play (2012), Doors: Chicago Storylines (2015), Heart Tonic (2018), Alula (2019), Anthems (2019), and Portals (2021). She won Downbeat’s Critic’s Poll Rising Star Alto-Saxophonist (2018) and was listed in both Downbeat’s Readers Poll (2021) and JazzTimes Expanded Critics Poll (2021).  Her work has garnered much praise from NPR, The New York Times, The Wire, DownBeat, JazzTimes, and many international publications. 

Davis is active as both a side-person and a leader in a diverse set of music communities (jazz, improvised music, modern classical, R&B, folk). Davis has worked with Lee Konitz, Angelica Sanchez, The Femme Jam, Matt Mitchell, Terry Riley, Miles Okazaki, Thana Alexa, and Billy Kaye, to name a few. Her collaborations include My Tree (with Ben Hoffmann) and Persona (with Rob Clearfield).  

Awards and recognitions over the years have included Caroline in various mentorship communities: Sisters in Jazz (2006), Betty Carter Jazz Ahead (2011), and the Mutual Mentorship Initiative (2020). Davis was the recipient of CMA's Performance Plus Grant (2021), NYFA's City Artist Corps Grant (2021), Jerome Hill Artist Fellowship (2019-2020); and she has participated in several residency programs, including fellow-in-residence at The Jazz Gallery (2022) and composer-in-residence at MacDowell (2019). Her compositional practice integrates music with the cognitive sciences, anatomical structures, and the brain, influenced by her Ph.D in Music Cognition. Davis is an advocate for social justice in the realm of gender (developed in a co-taught Jazz & Gender course at The New School) as well as in the abolitionist movement (Justice for Keith Lamar).

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Michigan Tech Jazz Ensembles are directed by Adam Meckler, Director of Jazz Studies and Assistant Professor, Visual and Performing Arts. Learn about all of Michigan Tech's jazz bands here. 

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Masks strongly recommended. Learn about the Rozsa COVID-19 Policies.