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W&L Jazz Ensemble Presents Winter Showcase The student ensemble will be joined by the Rockbridge County High School Jazz Combo Band in their April 9 Performance.

By Lily Caldwell
April 1, 2026

Jazz_Ensemble-600x400 W&L Jazz Ensemble Presents Winter Showcase

Join the Washington and Lee University Jazz Ensemble for their end-of-year concert, featuring the Rockbridge County High School (RCHS) Jazz Combo Band, at 8 p.m. on April 9 in Wilson Concert Hall in the Lenfest Center for the Arts.

The performance is free and open to the public and no tickets are required. The event will also be streamed online at https://go.wlu.edu/livestream.

The RCHS Jazz Combo Band, under the direction of Calvin Clark, and the W&L Jazz Ensemble, directed by Terry Vosbein, professor of music, composition and music theory at W&L, will reunite onstage for their annual celebration. The collaboration will bring together seasoned college performers and rising high school talent to showcase the best of their season’s work.

The performance will feature big band arrangements, standout soloists and high-energy swing. The concert will culminate with a joint performance featuring both bands on stage together, premiering an original composition by Terry Vosbein written exclusively for this event.

For a full list of events, visit the Department of Music’s website.

The Lenfest Center for the Arts, home of the Department of Theater, Dance, and Film Studies and the Department of Music and Department of Art and Art History is a multi-use facility designed and equipped to accommodate a broad spectrum of the performing arts, including theater, musical theater, opera and operetta, choral and band music, dance and performance art in one energizing complex.

A Family Connection

The performance will feature Terry Vosbein’s arrangement of the song “Dream a Little Dream of Me,” composed in 1930 by Milton Adolphus, great-grandfather to Maia Adolphus, a first-year alto saxophone in the University Jazz Ensemble. Milton Adolphis worked as a pianist and arranger in stage shows and dance bands, participating fully in the professional popular-music world of the 1930s. In 1930 he sold the song outright for $12.50, relinquishing any future ownership or royalty interest. The piece was later published and credited to other composers, with lyrics supplied by a third author, and it eventually became one of the most frequently recorded standards in American popular music. The University Jazz Ensemble will perform the song with Maia Adolphus featured as the alto saxophone soloist on her great-grandfather’s composition. It is a powerful full-circle moment: a first-year student performing a jazz standard that traces directly back to her own family history.