Seeley to perform benefit concert

Grammy Award-winning Holton native Jim Seeley will be returning to his home town in August for a night of jazz at a benefit concert at Holton Community Theatre, it has been reported.

Seeley, a 1978 graduate of Holton High School and the son of the late Dr. James and Anita Seeley, will bring the Roger Wilder Trio to the theater for a concert at 8 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 16. A “meet and greet” with Seeley will follow the performance at the theater, and drinks will be served during the event.

Tickets are $25 each plus fees and taxes and can be purchased online at holtoncommunitytheatre.org. Proceeds from the performance will benefit Beck Bookman Library’s Building Fund, Holton Community Theatre and Jackson County Kiwanis, it was reported.

Seeley is known in the jazz world not only as an accomplished trumpet and flugelhorn player, but also as a composer, arranger and educator. He is described by jazz critic Alex Henderson of All-Music Guide as “an acoustic-oriented post-bop/hard bop trumpeter who is hard-swinging but can be quite lyrical and melodic at times.”

After his graduation from HHS, Seeley headed to Boston to study at the Berklee College of Music, then moved to Los Angeles, joining the sextet of veteran jazz drummer Dick Berk for three years. After his work with Berk, he joined the Ray Charles Orchestra, playing with fellow trumpeter Johnny Coles before coming back to Los Angeles and playing with such legends as Harry James, Woody Herman and Artie Shaw.

In 1990, Seeley moved to New York, where he was prominently featured in Chico O’Farrill’s Afro-Cuban Jazz Orchestra and the Jazz at Lincon Center program’s Afro-Latin Jazz Orchestra, both of which demonstrated Seeley’s ability to combine jazz with Afro-Cuban rhythms and styles. He remained busy as an acclaimed sideman through the 1990s and early 2000s and led several New York-based groups of his own.

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