The concert will feature the music of Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn.  The Shenandoah Conservatory Studio Big Band was founded in the late 1950s as one of the first collegiate jazz ensembles in the country and has a long tradition of excellence.  The group has performed with numerous jazz legends; toured China, Japan, Iceland, Germany, Spain, France, and Senegal, Africa and won acclaim at multiple major jazz festivals.

The mission of the ensemble is to highlight prominent jazz composers and significant stylistic periods of all genres of popular music and the crossover result into jazz, providing the performers and audience a breadth of repertoire.