To close out the 25th anniversary season of Six Sundays in Spring, the Town of Wake Forest, Wake Forest Arts!, and PineCone welcome the John Brown Quartet to E Carroll Joyner Park for an evening of classic jazz. Bassist, composer, educator, and actor John Brown is a native of Fayetteville, North Carolina, who now makes his home in Durham. He performs actively as a leader and as a sideman across the country and beyond, including performances at notable venues like Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center, the Blue Note, Blues Alley, and the Hollywood Bowl, as well as at major jazz festivals like the JVC Jazz Festival, the Montreal Jazz Festival, the Free Jazz Festival (Brazil), the Jazz e Vienne (France), and more. Brown’s first commercially released recording, Terms of Art – A Tribute to Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers, garnered national attention and reached #8 on the nation’s JazzWeek Chart. During the end of 2007, Brown joined the ranks of those to have TWO releases appear in the Top 40 of the JazzWeek Chart when Terms of Art appeared at #17 and Merry Christmas, Baby appeared at #39. Brown has performed with artists like Wynton Marsalis, Ellis Marsalis, Delfeayo Marsalis, Elvin Jones, Nnenna Freelon, Diahann Carroll, Rosemary Clooney, Nell Carter, Lou Donaldson, Slide Hampton, Nicholas Payton, Frank Foster, Larry Coryell, Cedar Walton, Fred Wesley, and Mark Whitfield, among others. Brown also has a GRAMMY nomination for his performance and co-writing on Nnenna Freelon’s 1996 Concord release, Shaking Free.
His groups also regularly participate in education programs like the cARTwheels program sponsored by the North Carolina Arts Council. Brown still performs as a substitute with both the North Carolina Symphony and the Charlotte Symphony. He is the founding director of the Triangle Youth Jazz Ensemble, and he heads the JAZZFORCE, an auditioned group made up of the top performing high school students in a 75-mile surrounding radius of the Triangle area of North Carolina. Brown is also the founder of the Performing Arts Coalition – a non-profit organization that supports education and performance arts. Brown recently served on the Pulitzer Prize jury, and he has served on the Boards of the American Federation of Musicians, the North Carolina Jazz Foundation and the North Carolina Jazz Network, and currently serves on the board of the Duke Cancer Patient Support Program.
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Event information
Pets on leashes are welcome. NOTE: Alcoholic beverages, along with gas and charcoal grills, are not allowed. Two large charcoal grills are provided on site. Park visitors are reminded that unleashed pets are also prohibited.
Parking is only permitted in the visitor parking lot or in the flat, grassy area at the park’s entrance. Designated parking for people with disabilities is available in E Carroll Joyner Park’s parking lot. Please park in the designated parking lot if space is available.
For safety reasons, parking is NOT permitted along the entry road to Joyner Park. Overflow parking is also available at the Cottage at Olde Mill Stream, 901 Barnford Mill Road. Learn more about parking at E Carroll Joyner Park, and see a map of the different parking areas
Sponsors
Weather Updates
The stage at E. Carroll Joyner Park will be covered again this year, so concerts will not be canceled in case of brief showers. Wake Forest expects a permanent cover over the amphitheater in 2019!
In the event of inclement weather, there will be no shortage of ways to find out whether the concert will be moved to the rain site. Updated concert information will be available by 3 p.m. on the day of the concert via PineCone’s website, e-newsletter and social media channels (Facebook and Twitter). Updated concert information will be available on Wake Forest TV 10, the Town of Wake Forest Facebook page, or by calling the Wake Forest Weather Line at 919-435-9569. Smart phone users who have downloaded the Town of Wake Forest app will receive a message informing them of any schedule changes. The app is available for iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad, and Android users. Search for “Town of Wake Forest” on iTunes, in the iPhone app store, or in Google Play.
In case of truly inclement weather, concerts are normally moved to the Renaissance Centre, 405 S. Brooks St. in Wake Forest. The Centre cannot accommodate pets, picnics or lawn chairs. Food vendors will not relocate to the Centre; snacks and drinks can be purchased from the Centre.
Because of Renaissance Centre renovations, we may use the Flaherty Park Gymnasium, 1226 N. White Street in Wake Forest, as a rain venue for the first few 2018 concerts.