Major birthdays let us mark milestones in our lives. The Frost School of Music alumni artists who will light up the April 8th Centennial Celebration Concert commemorating the 100th birthday of the Frost School and the University of Miami represent the countless milestones—lives transformed, dreams fulfilled, music enriched in ways big and small—of the generations of students who have studied at the Frost School.
“To be part of a celebration of 100 years of excellence and perseverance and making a difference in the lives of young people is really an honor,” said Dawnn Lewis. A singer, actress, and songwriter who was the Frost School’s first musical theater graduate in 1982, Lewis will lead all the artists in a grand finale blending The Beatles “Birthday” and Stevie Wonder’s “Happy Birthday.” “Celebrating time-tested excellence is a wonderful thing,” she said. “That’s what these alums are—time-tested excellence, 100 years strong.”
Lewis’ younger counterparts echo that sense of magnitude. “It’s so crazy to me that I was selected for this,” said jazz vocalist Ashley Pezzotti, who graduated in 2018. The South Florida-raised singer brought the skills and deep understanding of jazz she learned at the Frost School to collaborations with icons like Wynton Marsalis and Arturo Sandoval. “It’s a full circle moment. To think about all the incredibly talented individuals that came before me and will continue to attend the Frost School—it’s an incredible honor to be part of that legacy and to honor this school.”
The concert, at 7 p.m. on the Lakeside Patio overlooking Lake Osceola, is the highlight of a Centennial Celebration that will fill the heart of the University’s Coral Gables Campus. Thousands of people, from current students to VIP donors, have RSVP'd for the party, with many more Cane alumni and supporters expected to join virtually. The entire celebration is free and open to the public.
Conceived and organized by Frost School Dean Shelton G. “Shelly” Berg, the concert will feature an orchestra of undergraduate students from the Frost Symphony Orchestra and graduate students from the Henry Mancini Institute. They’ll be joined by a rhythm section of ace alumni instrumentalists: guitarist Andrew Synowiec, drummer Marko Marcinko, and bassist Will Lee, plus veteran drumming faculty Steve Rucker. Berg, in typically virtuoso fashion, will play piano and conduct. The unique arrangements for this unique concert are by Berg, students from the Studio Jazz Writing Program, and its director Stephen James Guerra Jr (except for Hornsby's song, arranged by Rob Moose.)
They’ll provide a once-in-a-century soundscape for some of the Frost School’s most famous alumni. They include singer-songwriter Ben Folds performing his “Theme from ‘Dr. Pyser,’” Broadway star Joshua Henry singing “The Room Where it Happens” from “Hamilton,” and multi-Latin Grammy-winning pop-rock group Bacilos (who formed while attending the University of Miami) playing their breakout hit “Tabaco y Chanel.”
Celebrated TV host and University of Miami graduate Jason Kennedy will emcee the show. Famous alumni athletes, including 1991 first-round NFL draft pick Randal Hill and three-time Olympic track medalist Lauryn Williams, will also add their star power to the event. The beloved Frost Band of the Hour marching band will bring the Hurricanes spirit with game-style fanfare.
But it is the alumni artists who'll bring to life the spirit of innovation and achievement that has defined the Frost School. Pat Metheny, the legendary, revolutionary jazz guitarist and composer who was part of a spectacularly talented generation that flourished in the jazz program’s free-wheeling early days, will play a medley of his songs “Are You Going With Me” and “First Circle.”
“It was really something,” said Metheny of the Frost School’s jazz program, one of the first in the country. He was recruited in 1972 by then-Dean William F. Lee, who came to see the teenaged prodigy at a Kansas City club in Metheny’s native Missouri. Lee, who was recruiting talented students for a new electric guitar major (also one of the first in the country), offered Metheny, who was performing so much he wasn’t sure he’d graduate from high school, a full scholarship.
Although Metheny was briefly a student before becoming a teacher at just 18 and only remained for three semesters, his time at the Frost School was transformative.
“There was just an incredible level of musicianship all around,” said Metheny of an era that fostered famed bassist Jaco Pastorious, jazz singer Carmen Lundy, guitarist Hiram Bullock (a Metheny student), and others. “By the time I left I sounded basically like what my thing has turned out to be. It was a period of incredible growth and inspiration for me.”
(Will Lee, another member of that extraordinary early 70s jazz cohort whose father was the dean that recruited Metheny, will perform “Liberty City” by Pastorius, who died prematurely in 1987 and whom Lee has called “brother, friend, hero, constant inspiration forever.”)
Metheny will be joined onstage by fellow alumnus Bruce Hornsby, who’ll perform his massive 1986 hit “The Way It Is,” which catapulted him into pop history. Hornsby, who graduated from the Frost School’s jazz program in 1977, applied after being rejected by the New England Conservatory of Music. A teacher at the more traditional school called Hornsby to turn him down and suggest a more adventurous program. “He said, ‘I don’t feel like you’re right for this program, but try the University of Miami,'” Hornsby recalled. He fit right into a place where faculty and students would jam until dawn. “To someone of a like mind, that was enticing,” Hornsby said.
Hornsby went on to a prolific, adventurous, and acclaimed career encompassing everything from rock to Americana to classical music. In 2007 he repaid the inspiration he found at the Frost School by helping create the Bruce Hornsby Creative American Music Program (CAM), immersing students in American song traditions and songwriting. “I wanted to do something that reflected my path and something I had delved deeply into since college, and that was songwriting,” Hornsby said.
Since then, CAM has become the heart of the Frost School’s contemporary music program, crucial for later students like Alexis “Idarose” Kesselman and Carter Vail, who both graduated in 2019 and are performing on April 8.
Vail, whose quirky, catchy songs like “Dirt Cowboy” have gone viral on social media, majored in music engineering, enabling him to produce his own music. But he says the craft he learned minoring in songwriting has been essential to his success.
“Being in a program that makes you write songs all the time, you get a lot less precious,” said Vail. “I just sit down and do it. Learning that discipline in school was super helpful.”
But most important was the camaraderie. “It felt more like CAM was the major because that’s where we put all our mental energy,” said Vail, who’ll perform “Harder to Kill” from his album “100 Cowboys,” which he wrote with fellow 2019 alumnus Noah Tauscher. “The main thing was the community. My whole band is Frost School alumni. The people I still work with today, that I write and produce with, I lived with in college.”
He’s thrilled and slightly disbelieving that he was chosen to play with the likes of Hornsby, Metheny, and Folds. “I’m so excited to be a part of this,” he said.
His classmate Kesselman, who majored in Media Scoring and Production, minored in songwriting, and has worked with major pop artists and films, echoed that sense of wonder.
“I cannot begin to express how much of an honor it is to come back and perform at Frost,” said Kesselman, who’ll sing “Glimpse of Us,” a massive 2022 hit she co-wrote for pop-electro artist Joji. She’s particularly excited to perform alongside Ben Folds, an inspiration who performed at the Frost School while she was there.
“To see my name alongside his, amongst the other legendary people performing, feels truly surreal,” she said. “At the Frost School, I would dream about being a professional songwriter and producer, and this performance feels like an exciting way to take a step back and congratulate my younger self for taking big strides toward that dream. It’s also an exciting reminder of how far I still have to go.”
For singer and songwriter Jon Secada, whose family fled communist Cuba for Miami’s working-class immigrant neighborhood of Hialeah when he was 11, the Frost School was a gleaming symbol of musical excellence. “I was just enthralled when I was accepted,” said Secada, a shy teenager who became the school’s first jazz vocal graduate in 1983 and earned a master’s in 1986. “It was a huge privilege.”
After college, Secada sang with a group of Frost School graduates in the Miami Sound Machine, the backing band for Gloria Estefan—the Cuban-American singer who was Miami’s first international pop star, and, with husband and producer, Emilio Estefan, became a major force in Latin and boundary-breaking pop music. That led to Secada becoming a backup singer and songwriter for the Estefans, who produced and released Secada’s multimillion-selling 1991 debut, powered by the breakout hit (in two languages) “Just Another Day/Otro día más sin verte” – which he’ll perform on April 8.
Secada went on to major success in pop, jazz, and on Broadway. He has stayed close to the school, which changed his life, and he quickly answered yes when Dean Berg invited him to perform.
“Everything I learned there, I carry it with me,” Secada said. “The Frost School gave me the opportunity to rise above. That means the world to me.”
Raquel Sofia, a singer-songwriter who graduated in 2009, was astonished when she got a call from Berg to join the concert, where she’ll sing “Llorando en una bici” (“Crying on a Bicycle”) from her newest album.
“Moved is the word,” said Sofia, who sang backup for international superstars Juanes and Shakira and whose 2015 debut album earned her a Latin Grammy nomination for Best New Artist. “I’m very emotional about this concert. It’s returning to my roots where I was happiest and met some of the most important people in my life. It’s a huge honor, and I feel special, grateful, and really excited.”
If you go: The Centennial Celebration Concert takes place at 7 p.m. on April 8 at the Lakeside Patio on the Coral Gables campus. The festivities start at 5 p.m. with the Canes Carnival on the Foote Green, and a Centennial Block Party along the Lakeside Patio and Westbrook Walkway, with complimentary food stations on Miller Drive from 6 to 8:30 p.m.
All events are free and open to the public, and you can RSVP here. More information can be found on the University’s centennial website at 100.miami.edu or at the Frost School Centennial Celebration website.
