IUP’s Homecoming weekend concludes this afternoon with the annual IUP Bands Homecoming Concert, from 3 to 5 PM at Fisher Auditorium. The concert will feature the IUP Symphony Band and Wind Ensemble, under the direction of Jason Worzbyt and Timothy Paul. Special guest conductors and composers are acclaimed jazz composer and artist Omar Thomas and Travis Weller.
Selections for this concert will include Tinkerbell’s Nightmare, White Keys for Concert Band, Chasing Mercury, Second Suite in F, the Rumor of a Secret King, Until Morning Come, Of Our New Day Begun, and Dream of a Witches Sabbath.
Omar Thomas is the protégé of lauded composers and educators Ken Schaphorst and Frank Carlberg, and has studied under multiple Grammy-winning composer and bandleader Maria Schneider.
Hailed by Herbie Hancock as showing “great promise as a new voice in the further development of jazz in the future,” educator, arranger, and award-winning composer Thomas currently serves as an associate professor of Harmony at Berklee College of Music and as assistant professor in music theory at the Peabody Conservatory. He has thrice been awarded the Certificate of Distinction in Teaching from Harvard University, where he served as a teaching fellow for four years. He was awarded the Boston Music Awards’ “Jazz Artist of the Year” in 2012, and in 2017 Thomas was selected from an international pool of applicants to be an artist-in-residence at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris.
