Chess Park to host Big Band Legends

By Eric Seiverling

eseiverling@yourmvi.com

The Pittsburgh Big Band Legends will prove this weekend “it don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing.”

The 17-piece orchestra will perform a free concert at 2 p.m. Sunday at Monongahela’s Chess Park as part of the EQT/Mon Valley Academy for the Arts Summer Concert Series.

The performance is the second concert in the series this season, and the series’ first concert at Chess Park this year.

The concert will feature jazz classics by Maynard Ferguson and Glenn Miller, songs by Monongahela native and film score composer Jay Chattaway as well as other rock, funk and Latin favorites.

Along with having some of Pittsburgh’s most renowned musicians, such as trumpeters Michael Bodnar and Larry Davis and baritone saxophonist Rick Nowlin, the Pittsburgh Big Band Legends is known for being led by trumpeter and Monongahela resident Frank Podroskey, who died at 74 in January after a long and distinguished music career throughout the Mon Valley and the Pittsburgh region.

Davis will lead the band Sunday, which will be its first public performance since Podroskey passed away.

“The band actually started as a group of Frank’s friends,” Nowlin said. “We all became pretty close beyond the Monday rehearsals.

“We started our rehearsals again in May and we barely skipped a beat. Many of us were tight anyway, not just on the band level but personally. Everybody pretty much wanted to keep the band moving. Frank would have wanted it that way.”

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