Student Jazzers End Night at the Pops

For the third consecutive year, Keith Lockhart and the Boston Pops will partner with Berklee College of Music to present the Berklee Jazz Café, featuring top student jazz groups performing at Symphony Hall, in the Higginson and Cabot-Cahners Rooms, after the Pops Jazz Fest concerts. The 2008 Boston Pops Jazz Fest features critically acclaimed jazz artists Arturo Sandoval (June 10 and 11) and the Dizzy Gillespie All-Stars (June 21 and 22). For a full schedule, visit bostonpops.org.

Berklee Jazz Café listeners will have the chance to hear some of tomorrow's top talent, including several international students and scholarship recipients, in a relaxed lounge-style setting. This year's collaboration showcases all-star Berklee student bands. Access to the Berklee Jazz Café is only available to Pops ticketholders.

June 10 and 11 - The Berklee Latin Jazz All-Stars group is comprised of top talents from Puerto Rico, Israel, and the continental U.S. With their impressive tracks "Puertorro" and "Electrik," they've been named this year's Best College Jazz Band in Down Beat magazine's prestigious Student Music Awards. With graduation still ahead, this group has performance and recording experience beyond their years. Leader and percussionist Paulo Stagnaro performs on Paquito D'Rivera's Funk Tango CD, winner of the 2007 Grammy for Best Latin Jazz Recording. Other members have performed with Dave Valentin, Cachao, Danilo Perez, and Victor Manuelle, among others, and recorded for XM Radio. They will headline later this year in the Tito Puente Latin Music Series in Boston and perform in Washington, D.C.'s Duke Ellington Jazz Festival.

June 21 and 22 - The Jazz Revelation All-Stars is a band of burgeoning musicians from Japan, Paris, and across the nation. Collectively this group has studied with jazz greats such as Joe Lovano, Ralph Peterson, Jean-Michel Pilc, Lionel Loueke, Joanne Brackeen, and more. Alto saxophone player Pat Carroll was commissioned to write and perform original music as a member of the SFJAZZ Young Composers Project, a group that rehearsed with the likes of Ravi Coltrane, Vijay Iyer, Maria Schneider, and Miguel Zenon. Many of the performers on the line-up are artists featured on the new CD compilation, Common Ground, released by Berklee's Jazz Revelation Records.