Jazz selections highlight memorial concert at Ripon College

Jazz standards of the 1930s and 1940s as well as other jazz selections will be offered during a free concert at 7:30 p.m. Friday, Sept. 5, at Ripon College.

This will be the first annual presentation of the Lynn Post Northrop Memorial Concert in honor of Northrop, who died in April 2014. She was the wife of Douglas Northrop, Helen Swift Neilson Professor of Cultural Studies Emeritus at the College.

“We wanted no speeches or commentary, just a chance for friends and others to get together and share some good music,” Doug Northrop says. “It is a proper statement of what Lynn and I enjoyed and what we hoped others will enjoy.”

Northrop is establishing an endowed fund which will fund one of the Chamber Music & Jazz at Ripon Series concerts each year.

Selections for the Sept. 5 concert will include popular tunes by such composers as the Gershwins, Duke Ellington, and Rodgers and Hammerstein. The performers will be Kurt Dietrich, professor of music and Barbara Baldwin DeFrees Chair in Performing Arts at Ripon College; John Harmon, piano; John Gibson, bass; Mike Hale, drums; and Paul Dietrich, trumpet.

John Jensen, for many years a member of the Mirecourt Trio, a long-time artist-in-residence group for the Green Lake Festival of Music, also will perform.

The concert will be in Demmer Recital Hall, C.J. Rodman Center for the Arts, on the Ripon College campus. There is no charge to attend, but to ensure seating call 920-748-8791.