Jazz Festival
The 51st Annual PSU Jazz Festival is planned for
March 7, 2025
About the PSU Jazz Festival
The 1st Annual Jazz Festival Concert was held in 1968 in Carney Auditorium at what was then called Kansas State College of Pittsburg.
The festival in its current format was started in 1974 by Professor Russell Jones with just 14 bands. In 1978, he passed the baton to Professor Robert Kehle, who continued to grow it until his retirement in 2023. It’s now coordinated by a committee of music faculty.
Recent festivals have attracted more than 70 middle and high school bands from across the Four State Area, each of whom perform for a guest judge with high credentials. The day culminates with a concert at Memorial Auditorium in Downtown Pittsburg with the PSU Jazz Ensemble and Jazz Combo as the opening act and featuring an internationally acclaimed jazz band as the headliner.
It has become a landmark cultural event for the area, the university, and the state of Kansas.
“Bob Kehle has done a wonderful job of turning the festival into a must-see event, inspiring countless students, educators, and professional musicians. It’s an incredibly exciting event that the students and the community look forward to each year.” — Professor Todd Hastings, director of the PSU Jazz Ensemble and Jazz Combo.
Registration and schedule coming Soon!
For additional information email jazzfest@pittstate.edu or call 620-235-4466
The 50th Jazz Festival
Matt Catingub Big Band
March 1, 2024
Matt Catingub is considered one of the pioneers of the modern Big Band. The son of the great jazz vocalist and “Polynesia’s First Lady of Song,” Mavis Rivers, he is a proud Pacific Islander. In his early years, he performed with her around the world, including a 1983 performance for Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip.
At age 17, he performed and presented his original big band compositions at the Monterey Jazz Festival, with that success catapulting him to a tour of Japan playing with jazz legends Dizzy Gillespie, Thad Jones, and Ruth Brown.
Right out of high school, Catingub joined the big bands of Louie Bellson, who performed at Pitt State in the mid-1980s.
He was only 21 when he formed his first big band in Los Angeles and released his first recording, “My Mommy and Me,” which is recognized as one of the great break-out jazz recordings. It featured many of his hits that still resonate today, including “Blues and the Abscessed Tooth” and “Bopopularity,” and featured his mother.
He then released “Hi Tech Big Band,” one of the most innovative recordings of the genre, on which he performed all of the instruments, electronically recreating the sound of a big band while also introducing more big band classics like “The Umpire Strikes Back” and “Indian Riffs.”
His credits also include touring the world with the legendary Rosemary Clooney, and creating the music for the film “Goodnight and Good Luck,” which won a Grammy and allowed him the chance to work with jazz great Diane Reeves and writer-director George Clooney.
He has conducted, created, and performed with symphonic pop orchestras, including the Hawaii & Honolulu Symphony Pops, the Glendale Pops in L.A., and the Macon Pops near Atlanta, Georgia. With these entities he has conducted, performed, and orchestrated for artists like Al Jarreau, Diana Krall, Michael McDonald, and Kenny Loggins.
Last year marked the rebirth of the Matt Catingub Big Band, and the release “From Samoa to Sinatra,” celebrating the music of Frank Sinatra and Catingub’s mother, the first female artist Sinatra signed to his Reprise Records label in 1961.
Performing brand new arrangements and revisiting many of his hit originals, his band presents an exciting mix of old and new, including using technology to perform with “mom from the past” using tracks recorded while his mother was pregnant with him!
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