Utah Arts Festival Awards the Jazz Master Award to Neil Weight

Utah Arts Festival Awards the Jazz Master Award to Neil Weight

Salt Lake City, UT:  It’s not often that Utah Arts Festival organizers bestow the Jazz Master Award to an artist. The award, given only when the appropriate person is identified, recognizes outstanding life-time achievement of an established Utah native or resident for jazz performance, composition, and education.

This year, Utah Arts Festival honors Neil Weight with the Jazz Master Award.

Born in Salt Lake City in 1935, Neil Weight played his first professional gigs on trumpet at 13 years old. He established himself as a top call trumpet player working with Nat King Cole, Bob Hope, Johnny Mathis and even Johnny Cash. He performed with the National Guard Army Band for 26 years and became staff arranger for the concert and jazz bands of the 23rd Army Band, which still performs his music today.

Weight earned a BA and MA in music from the University of Utah. As an educator and counselor, he was the band director at Granite High School in 1963 and started a jazz band for high school students. He served a counselor at Skyline High school until his retirement in 1995.

Weight remains active as a jazz arranger and creates new charts for the Salt Lake City Jazz Orchestra. His arrangements are featured regularly at the Salt Lake International Jazz Festival, and a new arrangement of Body and Soul will feature Jerry Floor on clarinet with the Salt Lake City Jazz Orchestra.

Former Jazz Master Award Winners include Larry Smith (2005), Lars Yorgason (2006) and Bob Bailey (2007).

Neil Weight will accept his award, then conduct premiere performances of the arrangements he created with the Salt Lake City Jazz Orchestra during the Utah Arts Festival on Fri, June 22, 8:30pm, Festival Stage.

His new arrangement of “Body and Soul,” a classic jazz standard, will feature bandleader Jerry Floor on clarinet.

The 2012 Utah Arts Festival runs Thursday, June 21 through Sunday, June 24 from noon to 11 p.m. on Library Square, 400 South and 200 East in downtown Salt Lake City.

Adult admission is $10 at the gate, $7 in advance. Children 12 and under are free. Seniors 65 and above are $5. Reduced adult admission is $5 and available from noon to 3 p.m. on Thursday and Friday.

For details and more information visit www.uaf.org. Follow the Utah Arts Festival on
Facebook and Twitter @utahartsfest.