Inauguration Celebration at The Jazz Loft
Thursday, April 17, 2026
The Jazz Loft, Stony Brook Village
6 pm–8 pm
By invitation only
President Andrea Goldsmith welcomes guests to The Jazz Loft for an evening of music, featuring the Stony Brook University Jazz Orchestra, made up of undergraduate and graduate students. The program will feature an original work composed by Thomas Manuel and arranged by Rich DeRosa to commemorate President Goldsmith's investiture as the seventh president of Stony Brook University.
Heritage celebrates the rich artistic legacy of SBU over the past 60-plus years.
Manuel says of the composition, “I wanted something that was celebratory and captured the excitement of where we are at as a university. I wanted musically for people to feel the energy and excitement of our incredible accomplishment as a flagship institution, the incredible potential of our diverse and creative student body, as well as the rich history we stand on.”
In Heritage, with orchestration provided by DeRosa — arranger for Jazz at Lincoln Center, the
iconic WDR Big Band, and numerous other international artists — we hear an opening
chorale with is a musical honor to our new president. As the chorale ends and the
melody begins, the groove is actually quite African, acknowledging the roots of this
rich musical tradition we call Jazz. A Brazilian groove (Baião) was created that incorporates
that similar rhythm (our "Charleston" pattern) and it has a lot more drums in the
sound plus an infectious drive.
These elements celebrate the diversity of our musical tradition, and are highlighted by the diversity of our DMA Jazz student soloists, Alex Soto, piano, Dario Chiazzolino, guitar, and Alejandro Espinosa, trombone.
As with all original Jazz compositions and performances, improvisation is at the heart of each and every performance. The improvisations you will hear in this performance will never be heard again- they are original, genuine, authentic expressions of how the artists feel in the moment.
These expressions are symbolic of our future as a university and the collective creative voices of our students who will leave their mark on our global society effecting positive change and leave the world a better place for having been a part of it.
Jazz historian, music educator and cornet player Dr. Thomas Manuel holds the endowed Artist in Residence Fellow chair within the Jazz department at Stony Brook University. In addition to this he is the artistic director of the Loft School of Jazz; a member of the Huntington Arts Council Decentralization Advisory Committee; the founder and president of The Jazz Loft in Stony Brook, N.Y., an innovative and creative space which joins jazz performance, jazz preservation and jazz education in celebration of the past, present, and future; and also serves as the president for The Institute For New Music.
Manuel has been cited for his accomplishments by The New York Times, Downbeat Magazine, Newsday, Jazz Inside Magazine, Hot House Jazz Magazine, The New York City Jazz Record, and Jazz Ed Magazine and has been actively involved with global educational outreach to Havana, Cuba, Monrovia, Liberia and Port Au Prince, Haiti. Manuel dedicates his professional efforts to both the preservation of Long Island’s jazz history as well as presenting it to future generations and has received several honors for his dedication to the American born art form of Jazz including: Stony Brook University's 40 Under 40 Award, several Suffolk County proclamations, the East End Arts & Humanities Council 2020 Music Masters residency, the 2019 Applied Improvisation Network International Conference artist presenter, the 2016 Person of the Year in Brookhaven award from the Times Beacon Record, and he has also served as a trustee to the Frank Melville Memorial Foundation.
In 2025 Manuel was a guest speaker at the annual Martin Luther King Jr. Day event at the New York State Capital Convention Center in Albany, New York. Dr. Manuel spoke along with SUNY Chancellor John King Jr. and New York State Secretary of State Walter T. Mosley. Manuel also presented a short performance with his graduate students including an original composition Disruptors For Good written in honor of Dr. King and other Civil Rights activists.
Most recently Manuel has curated a new concert series: The Jazz Loft @ Southampton, presenting monthly performances at The Avram Theatre celebrating diverse themes in Jazz and spotlighting some of the biggest names in Jazz today. In 2026 he will be spearheading the renovation and revitalization of The Jazz Loft’s recently purchased Vail Leavitt Theatre in Riverhead, NY, New York’s oldest theatre in downstate NY. Additionally he will be returning to the recording studio after quite a lengthy absence and recording two new albums: one en duo with longtime collaborator, guitarist Stephen Salerno, and another fronting his 17-piece Jazz Orchestra featuring Grammy-winning vocalist Nicole Zuraitis.
Richard DeRosa received a Grammy nomination for Best Instrumental Composition in 2015 for his big band composition Neil, which is dedicated to Neil Slater, the former director of the One O’Clock Lab Band (University of North Texas). His eight-movement work titled Life in Poetry and Music, featuring world-renowned vocalist Kurt Elling supported by a jazz quartet, orchestra, and treble choir, was premiered at UNT in March 2022.
Since 2001 DeRosa has arranged and conducted music for Wynton Marsalis and the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra to feature Toots Thielemans, Annie Ross, Willie Nelson, Norah Jones, Cassandra Wilson, and Roberta Gambarini among several other notable artists that include a Steven Sondheim theater project (A Bed and a Chair) and an arrangement of The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea for the successful swing jazz Broadway show After Midnight. He also contributed arrangements for the Wynton with Strings concert. Recent large projects include Bernstein at 100 and Joey Alexander with Strings.
In 2012 the WDR Big Band in Cologne, Germany, invited DeRosa to conduct and present his music in concert. Following that engagement, he was asked to become the ensemble’s chief conductor. After several other commissions throughout 2013, he filled the position from 2014-2016. During that time he released three CD recordings: My Personal Songbook which features the music of legendary jazz bassist Ron Carter; Rediscovered Ellington which features longtime music partners Garry Dial & Dick Oatts - together they created unique and modern renditions of Duke's rare and unheard tunes; Crossing Borders featuring Richie Beirach and Gregor Huebner. Other projects with guest artists include Joshua Redman, Stefon Harris, Kurt Elling, Patti Austin, the New York Voices, Ola Onabule, Warren Vaché, Marvin Stamm & Bill Mays.
Other commissioned arrangements have been recorded by the Mel Lewis, Gerry Mulligan, and Glenn Miller big bands, vocalist Susannah McCorkle, trumpeter Dominick Farinacci on his CD Lovers, Tales, and Dances, and acclaimed solo violinist Anne Akiko Meyers on her CD recordings Seasons….Dreams and Shining Night. DeRosa also served as co-arranger, orchestrator, and conductor for other critically acclaimed recording projects: When Winter Comes featuring guitarist Fred Fried; Dial & Oatts: Brassworks, and their double CD project That Music Always Round Me which DownBeat Magazine selected as one of the top recordings in 2015.
DeRosa’s arrangements for orchestra have been performed by the Cleveland Orchestra, New York Pops, Portland Maine Pops, Kansas City Symphony with the Bobby Watson Quintet, UNT One O’Clock Lab Band with the Houston Symphony Orchestra, Metropole Orchestra in Holland, Czech National Symphony and the Swedish Television and Radio Orchestra in Stockholm. Other European jazz bands, including the Stockholm Jazz Orchestra, have commissioned his compositions and arrangements.
DeRosa’s compositions for television, film, and theater include background music cues for Another World, As the World Turns, The Guiding Light, commercials for Telex, Bristol-Meyers, and Kodak, various documentaries broadcast on PBS, orchestrations for independent films Gray Matters, Falling For Grace, and Standard Time, and more than 20 original music scores for the national touring U.S. theater company ArtsPower as well as orchestrations for Frankenstein, the Musical. He has also composed scores for videos and hundreds of audiobooks for publishing companies including Bantam Doubleday Dell, Random House, Scholastic, Simon & Schuster, and Prentice-Hall.
Earlier in his career as a performer, DeRosa toured and recorded with Gerry Mulligan, Bob Brookmeyer, Susannah McCorkle, Jackie Cain & Roy Kral, Chuck Wayne, and Marlene VerPlanck. Other employers include Marian McPartland, Gene Bertoncini, Warren Vaché, Larry Elgart, Peter Nero, and vocalist Chris Connor.
DeRosa is a full professor at the University of North Texas and the director of jazz composition and arranging. In 2017 he was the recipient of the Presidential Excellence Award for faculty. His former teaching positions were at William Paterson University and Manhattan School of Music. He also taught advanced jazz arranging for studio orchestra at The Juilliard School. He is the author of Concepts for Improvisation: A Comprehensive Guide for Performing and Teaching (Hal Leonard Publications) and Acoustic and MIDI Orchestration for the Contemporary Composer (Focal Press) co-authored with Andrea Pejrolo. The latter book has experienced worldwide success and has been translated into Chinese in a subsequent edition. A new expanded English edition was published in October 2016.
DeRosa’s publications for professional jazz bands are available through Sierra Music. His compositions and arrangements for public school jazz ensembles are available through Alfred Music (Belwin Jazz), Barnhouse Music, J.W. Pepper, and e-Jazz Lines. Mr. DeRosa remains active as an adjudicator and clinician for music festivals and workshops.
The Stony Brook Jazz Orchestra is the Jazz Department's premier ensemble. Composed of graduate and undergraduate students, the orchestra is representative of a crosscurrent of the university's student population with members hailing from over six different countries. A seventeen musician ensemble, the Jazz Orchestra ranges from students pursuing doctoral studies in Jazz to undergraduate and masters students studying physics, applied mathematics, and a variety of other majors.
The Stony Brook University Jazz Orchestra is built upon a rich and long standing tradition of the exploration and cultivation of artists' individual voices rooted in the art of improvisation. Its place and contributions to campus life and the advancement of Jazz as a uniquely American art form have been evident since the start of our university and trace back as early as 1964. The Jazz Orchestra explores and performs a rich history of both historic repertoire as well as new literature. Compositions and arrangements by current and new composers and arrangers including SBU department of music composition students are regularly performed and premiered. The Jazz Orchestra also collaborates with celebrated guest artists each year and presents an annual orchestral project at The Staller Center for the Arts each spring.
For the last two decades the Stony Brook University Jazz Orchestra was directed by Ray Anderson, named five straight years as best trombonist by the Downbeat Critics Poll and declared "the most exciting slide brass player of his generation" by the Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD. Anderson's approach to the Jazz Orchestra was rooted in his University of Chicago Lab School training and influenced by Lawrence "Butch" Morris' system of structured, large ensemble improvisation. The Jazz Orchestra is currently directed by Jazz historian and current Endowed Artist in Residence Fellow Thomas Manuel. A protege of Anderson, Manuel is an authority on the Jazz orchestra, most notably the works and tradition of Edward Kennedy "Duke" Ellington.
Stony Brook University was an early pioneer in Jazz education and proudly is the birthplace of the first ever not-for-profit organization for Jazz, originally called The International Art of Jazz founded by Ann Sneed. The organization still exists today as the Jazz Education Network (JEN). Another notable first in Jazz, SBU professor LeRoi Jones (later Amiri Baraka) authored Blues People: Negro Music in White America (1963) which is widely recognized as the first major, comprehensive book on jazz and blues history written by a Black author. While not written by a traditional academic, it broke ground as a sociological study of African-American music. SBU's current director of Jazz Studies Roxy Coss is a leading pioneer in female leadership within Jazz education in America. Coss is also the Founder and President of Women In Jazz Organization (WIJO), and Co-Artistic Director of the Brubeck Jazz Summit.
Notable Jazz artists who have performed at Stony Brook University and who have collaborated with the Jazz program include: Mose Allison, Miles Davis, Count Basie, Charlie Byrd, Kai Winding, Dave Brubeck, Herbie Mann, Mongo Santamaria, Astrud Gilberto, Jaki Byard, Mel Lewis, Thelonious Monk, Thad Jones, Ravi Shankar, Charles Lloyd, John Hammond, Dizzy Gillespie, Roland Kirk, Cannonball Adderly, B.B. King, Roberta Flack, Les McCann, Elvin Jones, Keith Jarrett, Pharoah Sanders, Buddy Guy, Marion McPartland, Chick Corea, John McLaughlin, McCoy Tyner, Sam Rivers, Charles Mingus, Grover Washington Jr., Chuck Mangione, Sonny Rollins, George Benson, Ron Carter, Stan Getz, Pat Metheny, Al Dimeola, Gary Burton, Stanley Clarke, Bela Fleck, Ray Charles, John Pizzarelli, Joe Lovano, Warren Vache, Bill Crow, Oliver Nelson Jr, Nicole Zuraitis, Houston Person, Larry Fuller, Champian Fulton, Steve Little, Dan Pugach, Wynton Marsalis and others.