Benefit concert promoted by Wynton Marsalis

The concert being held tonight at the Oscar Peterson Concert Hall was planned many months ago, but when Charles Ellison saw Higher Ground, the four-hour television benefit held for Katrina hurricane victims last month, it gave him an idea: Why not turn the concert by 17 Concordia jazz teachers into a benefit, too?

The Higher Ground Hurricane Relief Fund was the initiative of Jazz at Lincoln Center and its artistic director, trumpeter extraordinaire Wynton Marsalis, who was about to play a concert in Montreal.

Ellison contacted Marsalis, whom he knows through the Smithsonian Institution’s jazz archives program.

Marsalis taped some publicity spots while he was in town, and promoted the Concordia hurricane benefit last Saturday night from the stage of Place des Arts to a sold-out crowd.

Irwin Block reported in the Sunday Gazette that Wynton Marsalis praised Ellison, who was sitting in the audience. He called him “a phenomenal musician, and one of the most soulful people in the world.”

Tonight’s concert may be sold out, too, but you can inquire by contacting Admission and the box office, at http://oscar.concordia.ca.