"We traveled 10 to 16 hours a day, many times seven days a week. By the time we made it to wherever we were going, we were hungry to play. When dates were back to back, many times we didn't have the opportunity to check into a hotel. From the bus we would dress, take out our instruments and play the concert directly. Sometimes, thinking back, it seems like those very conditions, along with talented and gifted musicians, were the key to making the band sound so magnificent." "Once in Tokyo waiting for a train, tenor man Percy Marion and I took out our flutes and began to play a flute duet. Before long a crowd of people gathered around." "As a kid the Duke Ellington Orchestra was not my favorite band. I was a Basie man. But after playing in the Ellington Orchestra I became an Ellington man."

Meet Vincent

the bandleader

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Vincent York is a jazz man.
In 1952, in Jacksonville, Florida, Vincent York was born into a family of musicians and a life of music. While he practiced on the school’s borrowed clarinet and oboe, he worked multiple jobs to earn a long awaited alto saxophone. That momentous day arrived in ninth grade and coincided with his introduction to Charlie Parker, the master of bebop, and the mythical musician who would shape his musicianship from that day forward.

In Baton Rouge, York became Southern University’s first jazz studies major under Alvin Batiste, a master of the clarinet. After graduate study in saxophone at the University of Michigan, York was invited to join The Duke Ellington Orchestra, led by Mercer Ellington, trumpeter and son of the legendary Duke Ellington.

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Moving back and forth between the music scenes in New Orleans, New York, and Detroit, York has recorded or played with noteworthy jazz artists such as Ella Fitzgerald and Sarah Vaughn as well as Motown names such as The Temptations, The Four Tops, Aretha Franklin and Martha Reeves.

From 1996 to 2000, Vincent York was a Michigan Council for Arts and Cultural Affairs Artist-in-Residence at Community High School in Ann Arbor. He formed and taught numerous student jazz combos there and at Washtenaw Community College, including a 21-member jazz orchestra with musicians ranging in age from 17 to 70. During this period, Vincent York discovered the satisfaction in working with young jazz musicians and promoting jazz studies. His own early awakening to jazz and extensive performance experience have schooled him in a mentor role to a new generation of jazz musicians.

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