‘Doc’ Austin, Alice Day to headline jazz event

Also appearing on the program will be the Ebony Chorale of the Palm Beaches Inc., directed by Orville Lawton, a native Floridian, which will perform sacred and secular, classics, Negro spirituals, and gospel music. The chorale won the silver trophy at the International Festival of Chorale Music in Verona, Italy, in 2008. It performed in Salzburg,  Austria, in the summer of 2010.  

Austin, a renown saxophone player with credits that span from America to Europe, is a native Miamian who is sometimes described as the city’s resident jazz impresario and the epitome of a renaissance man.

Austin has blazed trails as a multi-instrumentalist, educator and composer. He has performed with many greats including his mentor, Dizzy Gillespie, as well as Count Basie, Cannonball Adderly, B. B. King, Marvin Gaye, James Brown and Stevie Wonder.

Austin is the first black musician to play in the orchestra in the Eden Roc Hotel in Miami Beach.

He was the musical conductor of the smash Broadway hit Purlie and won the 1954 edition of the Ed Sullivan Show in which he simultaneously played two saxophones, holding one upside down.

For his Mosaic appearance, Austin will be accompanied by famed drummer Dave Nuby and two of his students, Elvis Paschal and John McMinn, both of whom are Miami-Dade public school band instructors. 

Day is regarded as representing the best of the jazz vocal tradition. Rhythmically strong, emotionally  intense and articulate, her gospel and jazz background serve as the basic ingredients for her art.

She believes that jazz, the distinctly American art form, must be shared worldwide and she travels the globe doing just that. For more than 20 years, she is in her hometown Miami for about one month each year. She spends the rest of the time touring.

Day spends four to six months in Southeast Asia, with extended stays in Bangkok, Thailand, at the Bamboo Bar in the Oriental Hotel. She currently performs in the Living Room at the Sheraton Grande Sukhumvit (Bangkok).

Each of these venues has been awarded the “High 5 Award” for the best jazz venue in Thailand on more than one occasion during Day’s stay there.

In Florida, Day is known as “The First Lady of Jazz.”On one of her recent visits back home, she received the Cultural Ambassadors' Award and has been inducted into South Florida's Hall of Fame.

Day will perform in Mosaic as part of her commitment to give back to her community. 

Joe's Stone Crab restaurant will sponsor a reception for the concert.

The Hampton House Motel, 5400 NW. 27th Ave., Miami, was once a prestigious resort. It opened in 1954 as one of a handful of segregation-era motels in the area of Miami that catered to black celebrities, local musicians and black families vacationing or visiting  South Florida.