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Join us in the Green Room at Crosstown Arts for a performance by Michael Shults Quintet featuring Clint Ashlock.

Kansas City transplant and current professor of saxophone at the University of Memphis Michael Shults joins forces with one of the central figures of the Kansas City scene – trumpeter and composer Clint Ashlock – and a rhythm section of Memphis stalwarts, presenting original music and standards. With Alvie Givhan, piano, Alan Maguire, bass, and James Sexton, drums.

Tickets: $10
Doors 7pm | Performance 7:30pm

About Clint Ashlock:
Trumpeter/composer/bandleader Clint Ashlock grew up in the Kansas City area. A dedicated and tireless contributor to the scene, Clint has performed with such luminaries as Aretha Franklin, the Temptations, Nicholas Payton and Natalie Cole, as well as being a mainstay on the local KC circuit, most notably as Artistic Director of the Kansas City Jazz Orchestra, leader of his own groups of varying size and genre, and as a member of ensembles such as The Project H and The Marcus Lewis Big Band. Ashlock has produced a number of recordings, including the latest KCJO album “Rhapsody,” which includes a 30-minute tour-de-force arrangement of “Rhapsody in Blue,” “New Jazz Order” featuring Bobby Watson, and with Denver pianist Ben Markley, entitled “The Return.” As a trumpeter, Ashlock reflects the lineage of his hard bop idols such as Lee Morgan, Freddie Hubbard and Woody Shaw, and his big band writing is heavily influenced by Duke Ellington, Thad Jones, Kerry Strayer and Dan Gailey. Ashlock has been featured as a soloist at the First Jazz Education Festival in Shanghai, China, and at the International Trumpet Guild Conference in Sydney, Australia, as a clinician across the country, and currently needs to stop buying so many shoes.

About Michael Shults:
Saxophonist Michael Shults has been praised for his “strong, imaginative” improvisations (Downbeat Magazine) and “fresh and intelligent musical ideas” (The Pitch). A first-call musician on the Kansas City jazz scene for nearly a decade, Shults remains an active performer in the Fountain City and beyond, and has twice appeared as a sideman on the Jazzweek National Radio Airplay Charts. As a graduate student at the Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, Michael was a finalist in the 2012 North American Saxophone Alliance Jazz Artist Competition, and was the winner of the Graduate College Soloist category in the 2012 Downbeat Magazine Student Music Awards Issue. He has performed by invitation as a featured soloist at the North American Saxophone Alliance biennial conference, the Jazz Education Network conference, the Wisconsin Music Educator’s Association conference, the Minnesota Music Educator’s Association conference, and the Fairbanks Summer Arts Festival.

Michael is Assistant Professor of Saxophone at the University of Memphis. Prior to Memphis, he taught for four years at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire. He is a Yamaha and D’Addario performing artist and performs on their instruments and reeds exclusively.