INFORMATION FOR
Camille Thurman, a saxophonist, composer, and vocalist, brings her unique sound to William Paterson University’s spring 2025 Jazz Room series on Sunday, April 6, 2025. The concert begins at 3:00 p.m. in the Shea Center for Performing Arts on campus. The concert is sponsored by the Heart of Jazz Foundation.
The Jazz Room, William Paterson University’s long-running performance series, will feature a wide variety of today’s most exciting jazz musicians during the spring 2025 season. Upcoming performances include Chico Alvarez with the William Paterson Latin Jazz Ensemble on April 13; the Christian McBride-Bill Charlap Duo on April 27; and vocalist Will Downing on May 9.
The 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. in the Shea Recital Hall.
Thurman has gained worldwide respect as a saxophonist as well as for her singing. A graduate of the famed New York LaGuardia High School for the Performing Arts, she was a finalist in the 2013 Sarah Vaughan Vocal Competition. Thurman has five full-length recordings as a leader to her credit. Her most recent project, Confluence: Vol 1 (2024) is a collaboration with master drummer Darrell Green and his quartet.
The New York City native has amassed several distinctive honors for her musicianship, including: NAACP Image Award Nominee for Outstanding Jazz Album, recipient of the SOUTH Arts Creative Jazz Road Artistic Residency, Downbeat Magazine’s Critics Poll Nominee for Rising Star Tenor Saxophonist and Vocalist and Rising New Artist (2023, 2022, 2021, and 2020), two-time winner of the ASCAP Herb Alpert Young Jazz Composers Award, a recipient of the Fulbright Scholars Cultural Ambassador Grant and Chamber Music of America Performance Plus Grant (Sponsored by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation), among others.
Thurman made history when she became the first woman in 30 years to tour, record, and perform full-time internationally with the world-renowned Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra as a saxophonist/woodwind doubler during the 2018-2020 season. A respected bandleader, she has headlined numerous notable concert venues and jazz festivals worldwide, including the Kennedy Center, the Library of Congress, and the Rose Theater. She has performed and toured in Paraguay and Nicaragua under the U.S. State Department Fulbright Program and was selected by American Music Abroad and the U.S. State Department to tour and perform in Africa as a U.S. Cultural Ambassador in Cameroon, Mozambique, Nigeria, Senegal, and Mauritania.
In 2020, Thurman founded The Haven Hang, a virtual and in-person mentorship series for young women musicians, with an initiative to mentor, aid, and support young women pursuing music careers in the performing arts. An assistant professor of jazz performance at McGill University, Thurman is a member of the board of directors of the Heart of Jazz Foundation, which awards scholarships and pairs young students with professional jazz mentors.
Tickets are $20 for the general public, $18 for WP faculty, staff, alumni, and senior citizens, $10 for non-WP students, and WP students are admitted free. For tickets or additional information, visit wp-presents.org, or contact the Shea Center Box Office at 973.720.2371 or boxoffice@wpunj.edu.
William Paterson University’s 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, which recently celebrated its 50th anniversary. 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 a grant from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts/Department of State, a partner agency of the National Endowment for the Arts.
