INFORMATION FOR
The Jazz Room, William Paterson University’s long-running performance series featuring a wide variety of today’s most exciting jazz musicians, returns for the fall 2025 season with concerts from September 28 through November 23, 2025 in the Shea Center for Performing Arts on campus in Wayne, NJ.
This year’s line-up includes singer Catherine Russell on Sunday, September 29; the Ted Rosenthal Trio playing Gershwin on Sunday, October 19; the Tyshawn Sorey Trio on Sunday, October 26; trumpeter Scott Wendholdt with the William Paterson Jazz Orchestra on Sunday, November 16; and pianist Eliane Elias on Sunday, November 23.
Concerts will begin at 3:00 p.m. Tickets are $20 for the general public, $18 for WP faculty, staff, alumni, and senior citizens, and $10 for non-WP students. WP students are admitted free with ID. Each concert will be preceded by “Sittin’ In,” the Jazz Room’s accompanying “meet the artist” concert preview featuring interviews with jazz artists and guest speakers. This informal discussion, free to all Jazz Room ticketholders, begins at 2:00 p.m., one hour prior to each concert, in the Shea Recital Hall. For tickets or additional information, visit wp-presents.org, or contact the Shea Center Box Office at 973.720.2371 or boxoffice@wpunj.edu.
The season opens on Sunday, September 28 with singer Catherine Russell, a WP audience favorite whose career has spanned numerous decades and musical styles. Early on, she sang background vocals for Steely Dan, Donald Fagen, David Bowie, Madonna, and many more. When she embarked on a solo career, she reached for standards like “Harlem on My Mind” and appeared in a biopic about early jazz leader Buddy Bolden. She has received three Grammy Award nominations and continues to collaborate with performers like Sean Mason and John Pizzarelli, with whom she performed here as part of the Jazz Room series. Her amazingly flexible voice will bring a great message of warmth and blues to the Jazz Room stage again.
Pianist Ted Rosenthal brings his trio to the Shea Center stage for a Gershwin program on Sunday, October 19. Rosenthal has collaborated, toured, and worked with some of the jazz greats of the past 40 years, including Gerry Mulligan, Art Farmer, Jon Faddis, Phil Woods, the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, and Bob Brookmeyer. Early in his career, he was winner of the 1988 Thelonious Monk International Jazz Piano Competition, and his appearance on Marian McPartland’s NPR Piano Jazz program is well known. His recordings show his approaches to the American popular song and Broadway classics. This concert will showcase his trio’s versions of the compositions of one of the greatest American composers of any genre, George Gershwin, including Rosenthal’s unique version of Gershwin’s iconic “Rhapsody in Blue.”
Tyshawn Sorey, winner of the 2024 Pulitzer Prize for Music and a MacArthur “Genius Grant” Fellowship—and a graduate of William Paterson University’s acclaimed Jazz Studies Program—brings his trio to the Jazz Room on October 26. Known worldwide for his compositions, he is a virtuosic and imaginative, powerful drummer who is a steady fixture on today’s jazz scene, collaborating with Aaron Diehl, Greg Osby, Marilyn Crispell, Roscoe Mitchell, Vijay Iyer, and many more. Sorey is on the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania, formerly taught at Wesleyan University, and holds a doctorate in composition from Columbia University.
On November 16, trumpeter Scott Wendholt, one of the main solo voices of the legendary Vanguard Jazz Orchestra, will perform as soloist with the William Paterson University Jazz Orchestra, directed by Mitch Butler. Wendholt has been the lead soloist on many of the Vanguard Orchestra’s most famous pieces, including “Mean What You Say,” and a newer composition written for him by the great Bob Brookmeyer. He has also performed or recorded with Bobby McFerrin, Chris Botti, Toshiko Akiyoshi, the Mingus Big Band, Christian McBride, Cyrus Chestnut, and led the house band at the famous Augie’s Jazz Club in New York in the early 1990s. He has been featured on more than 120 recordings. His virtuosity will be paired with the William Paterson Jazz Orchestra, led for the first time by Dr. Mitch Butler, WP’s new coordinator of jazz studies.
The great pianist, singer, and arranger Eliane Elias brings the fall series to a close on Sunday, November 23. Elias came to New York from her native Sao Paolo, Brazil to attend Juilliard, but a year later joined the powerful acoustic fusion band Steps Ahead with Michael Brecker, Mike Mainieri, and others. Aside from her long relationship with Steps, she has collaborated with Chick Corea and Herbie Hancock. Her main influences are Antonio Carlos Jobim and Bill Evans; she has dedicated albums to both, including one recording that featured unrecorded Evans compositions. Her deep dedication to the tradition of the bossa nova continues to showcase her as a vocalist as well as at the piano. A multiple Grammy Award winner, she continues to create albums at the highest level, including her newest release Time and Again.
William Paterson University has been a flagship of jazz education for more than 50 years and is recognized internationally for its Jazz Studies Program and nationally acclaimed Jazz Room series of concerts each fall and spring.
The Jazz Room series is the longest-running program of its kind in the United States. Launched in 1978, the Jazz Room has welcomed more than 500 jazz legends to the stage, including Sonny Rollins, Wynton Marsalis, Wayne Shorter, Joe Williams, Marian McPartland, Slide Hampton, Kenny Burrell, Joe Lovano, Kenny Garrett, Clark Terry, Michael and Randy Brecker, the Vanguard Orchestra, and more. Concerts have encompassed the entire spectrum of jazz, from early jazz and swing to avant garde, and from intimate solo performances to big bands.
The performance series provides support for the University’s internationally renowned Jazz Studies Program, founded in 1973. The program draws students from across the United States and abroad under the current direction of Grammy Award-winning pianist Bill Charlap.
The Jazz Room at William Paterson University has been made possible, in part, by funds from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, a partner agency of the National Endowment for the Arts.
