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Community Corner

Dobbs Ferry Resident Appointed Artistic Director for New International Jazz Fest

Seeking out and signing musical talent to perform at jazz venues and festivals is something Morganelli has been doing for a long time.

Dobbs Ferry resident Mark Morganelli has been appointed artistic director for the Mamaroneck International Jazz Festival on the Sound to be held annually starting in 2012. The appointment was made by Patrick Sciarratta, director of the festival and executive director of the Friendship Ambassadors Foundation which will provide administrative assistance to the festival for the village of Mamaroneck. 

The four-day festival—to include numerous concerts, activities, workshops and films related to jazz—is tentatively planned for multiple Mamaroneck locations in late spring or early summer of 2012.

Few people in the music business have Morganelli’s experience in assessing jazz-related talent. He has organized up to 50 free-attendance summer concerts in the Westchester County vicinity each year over many years and many paid-admission concerts in the metropolitan New York area. “I receive up to 300 submissions a year from artists and groups wishing to perform,” Morganelli said, “and many of them I would classify as excellent.”

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During Morganelli's jazz concert management career, his organization Jazz Forum Arts has booked many famous performers including Ahmad Jamal, Billy Taylor, James Moody, Lionel Hampton, Dave Brubeck, Betty Carter, Gerry Mulligan, Herbie Mann, Clark Terry, Chuck Mangione, Cassandra Wilson, Joshua Redman, Harry “Sweets” Edison, Sonny Rollins, Maynard Ferguson and the Count Basie and Duke Ellington Orchestras. 

Morganelli was the programming director for New York City's Birdland for five years; he also performed at the Village Gate and the Entermedia Theatre and organized the celebration of Dizzy Gillespie's 75th birthday at Carnegie Hall. 

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Morganelli is staging the Blue Note Jazz Festival at Lincoln Center on June 24 which stars Brazilian artist Milton Nascimento. Morganelli also performs with his group on Wednesday nights at Molly Spillane's in Mamaroneck and on Thursday evenings at Orissa in Dobbs Ferry.

He joins a Mamaroneck International Jazz Festival planning team that also includes Sciarratta, festival chairman Norman S. Rosenbaum who is the the mayor of Mamaroneck, Mark Ettenger, Mike Hines, Peggy Jackson, Lawrence Krashes and Gerry Ryan. Sciarratta has been active in the performing arts community here and abroad for many years and has been a faculty member at local colleges and universities.

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