Live jazz will come to Dubois for the first time in a quite a while, during a concert at the
Headwaters Center (20 Stalnaker St, Dubois) on Sunday, May 4 at 3:00 p.m.
Featuring the Helios Piano Trio, the performance will include the world premiere of “The Seasons,” a work commissioned by Helios and composed by jazz pianist Ben Markley, who is the head of jazz studies at the University of Wyoming.
The Helios Piano Trio, which is dedicated to bringing world-class music to rural areas, has
focused the entire concert around a theme of the four seasons. The May 4th performance
departs from the traditional classical repertoire by featuring tango and ragtime, as well as the jazz trio. It also includes a work by French composer Maurice Ravel.
Markley says he was delighted when he was asked to write a piece for the Helios Trio. “The
inspiration of the four seasons gave me enough direction to collect some sounds and grooves that I thought would translate well in this setting,” he said. “For me, each of the pieces represent sounds and rhythms that I associate with each season.”
For instance, the movement about winter tries to express the “kind of melancholy that I think we all feel in Laramie (and Wyoming in general) where the winters are long.” The spring movement, entitled ‘The Picture Outside My Window,’ intends to convey the feeling of “days that can look inviting from inside your house, but it’s not really until the end of April or middle of May that we start getting weather that makes us want to spend time outside.”
Jazz will return to Dubois again on Sunday, August 17, when Ben Markley will bring his own jazz trio to town for another concert.
These jazz concerts continue to achieve the mission of Dubois Chamber Music to enhance the variety of live music performance available in the area. Two other concerts in the 2025 season should satisfy lovers of classical music: a June 16 performance by musicians from Grand Teton Music Festival, presented in conjunction with the bicycle tour group Tour de Wyoming, and a final concert on September 28 that will feature a string quartet sponsored by Jackson Hole Chamber Music.
Tickets for the May 4 concert are available online at www.duboischambermusic.org.
Sponsored post paid for by Dubois Chamber Music.
