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A husband-and-wife duo will be the guest artists for the W.D. Packard Concert Band's summer finale.
Tania Grubbs is a Youngstown State University graduate, and frequent guest vocalist with the band, and the Big Band Sound of Packard. She has performed with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, the Florida Philharmonic, the Boca Raton Pops Orchestra and other ensembles, and her most recent release is 2020's "Live at Maureen's Jazz Cellar" by the Tania Grubbs Quintet.
Her husband, double bassist Jeffrey Grubbs, is a Cleveland native who has studied at YSU, the Cleveland Institute of Music and the University of Southern California. He performed for two years with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, followed by a position in the Florida Philharmonic Orchestra. He's been a member of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra since 1996 and actively performs in the Pittsburgh jazz community.
The couple will be featured together on Billy Strayhorn's "Flower Is a Lovesome Thing" and "Lost in the Stars" by Kurt Weill and Maxwell Anderson, and Grubbs also will sing "Put on a Happy Face" and "If My Friends Could See Me Now."
Guest conductor for the concert will be Bruce Moss, who has served as director of bands at St. Cloud State University, Eastern Illinois University and Bowling Green State University.
In 1979, he started a 44-year stint as music director and conductor of the Wheaton (Ill.) Municipal Band. During his tenure, the band performed twice at the Midwest International Band and Orchestra Clinic and was featured with the United States Marine Band in the PBS "American Experience" series documentary "If You Knew Sousa."
Other selections on the program include Mikhail Glinka's "Russian and Ludmilla" overture, Brant Karrick's "See Rock City" and marches by Santiago Lope, Kenneth J. Alford and John Philip Sousa.
The concert starts at 7 p.m. Sunday in the south lawn band shell at Packard Music Hall, 1703 Mahoning Ave. NW, Warren. Admission is free, and funding is provided by the W.D. Packard trust.