Fred Stride Wins International Jazz Arranging Competition

Posted on | April 3, 2007 | No Comments

by admin

The University of South Florida has announced the winners of their first International Jazz Arranging Competition 2007. Fred Stride of Vancouver and David Peoples of Memphis, Tenn., are the top winners, with Stride taking home the cash prize of $2500 for the ‘Open” category, and Peoples $1000 for the “Young Artists” categories.

Stride’s arrangement of “Peep” and Peoples’ arrangement of “Never Alone” will be performed by Chuck Owen and the Jazz Surge, April 21-23 at venues in the Tampa Bay area and Orlando.

The competition pays tribute to the compositions of the late saxophonist Michael Brecker, and is sponsored by the USF Center for Jazz Competition. Brecker, a jazz legend, passed away in January following a long fight with Myelodysplastic Syndrome and leukemia. More than 40 big-band arrangements, by composers representing six countries and three continents, were submitted to the competition.

Fred Stride is Senior Lecturer and Director of the UBC Jazz Ensemble. As a composer and arranger Stride has written many pieces for jazz ensemble, as well as countless arrangements for various entertainers and performers in almost every musical setting: from small ensembles to big bands, concert bands to symphony orchestras, as well as for television, radio and records. As a performer, director and arranger, he has also recorded several albums. In non-jazz areas, he has written for brass quintet, string quartet and studio orchestras, as well as the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, several of which works were commissioned by the C.B.C. Fred Stride also works as a clinician, adjudicator and teacher at various jazz workshops and summer camps.