Jazzlovers, rejoice. You’ll have three opportunities in March and April to relax with your favorite music in St. Bonaventure University’s Rathskeller.

Each performance in the Jazz in the Rathskeller series will feature a one-hour live music set. The event is free and open to the campus and Olean-area community.

On Wednesday, March 26, at 7 p.m., the Da Capo Saxophone Quartet, led by Buffalo’s Sal Andolina, will play jazz standards arranged for four saxes.

Andolina is a longtime member of the quartet and a saxophone soloist of the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra. He has a long-running sax quartet (soprano, alto, tenor and baritone) that plays jazz arrangements of their own, as well as a well-known repertoire from New York City’s 29th Street Sax Quartet and the Miami Sax Quartet.

The Thursday, April 10, performance begins at 6:30 p.m. and will feature the Mark Filsinger Sextet, a member of the Buffalo Jazz Collective.

Trumpeter Filsinger is the head of Jazz Studies at Buffalo State University. His players include members who are adjuncts at SUNY Fredonia’s School of Music, including John Bacon Jr. on drums and Elliot Scozzaro on alto sax. The group will feature a trumpet, alto sax, trombone, and baritone sax with acoustic bass, and drums. The sextet’s music is influenced by Capitol Records’s “Birth of the Cool” sessions of the late 1940s by the great Miles Davis and Gerry Mulligan.

The final performance in the series will feature the popular Jazz ’n’ Wings lineup on Thursday, April 24, at 6:30 p.m. The SBU Jazz Band will play a set of big band music while guests can enjoy free chicken wings courtesy of the Office of the Provost at St. Bonaventure.

The SBU Jazz Band is directed by Dr. Les Sabina, professor of Music and chair of St. Bonaventure’s Department of Visual and Performing Arts.

“We’ll play a variety of contemporary big band tunes and have two pieces that will feature our graduating seniors, Domini Dalfonso on alto saxophone and Ryan Bokman on trumpet,” said Sabina, who organized the Jazz in the Rathskeller series.

Student vocalist Ryan Addeo will join the band for two tunes, one of which will be “Sway,” a song popularized by Michael Bublé.

The university’s Rathskeller is located below Hickey Dining Hall.

The March 26 and April 10 performances are sponsored by the Martine Endowment for the Improvement of Teaching at Learning at the university.

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About the University: The nation’s first Franciscan university, St. Bonaventure is a community committed to transforming the lives of its students inside and outside the classroom, inspiring in them a commitment to academic excellence and lifelong civic engagement. Out of 167 regional universities in the North, St. Bonaventure was ranked #6 for value and #14 for innovation by U.S. News and World Report (2024).