Mark Morganelli Is Moving "Jazz Forum Arts" to Tarrytown

After 23 years of living and working in Dobbs Ferry, Jazz Forum Arts’ Executive Director Mark Morganelli and his wife Ellen Prior, are purchasing a mixed-use building in Tarrytown which will become his organization’s new studio and office and their residence. The building was formerly a bakery.

The first floor will be used for performances and exhibition space. The upper floor will be Mark and Ellen’s new home.

Morganelli has long been a familiar figure in the music community both as a program organizer and as a trumpeter, flugelhornist and exponent of Brazilian influenced jazz. He has produced more than fifty compact discs, most recorded for Candid Records. Twenty were recorded “live” at New York City’s famous Birdland where he was the music coordinator for five years.

He has made an almost countless number of appearances at Westchester County venues including Washington Irving’s Sunnyside, Jay Gould’s Lyndhurst, Patriots Park, Pierson Park, and the Castle in Tarrytown, Red Hat on the River in Irvington and too many more locations to mention.

The first jazz concert he organized took place in June, 1979 with talented but little known performers in a third-floor loft at 50 Cooper Square, New York City. In 1981, he relocated to 648 Broadway at Bleecker St., and the concerts continued until April, 1983.

In the next stage of his career, Morganelli performed and produced at Manhattan venues including the Village Gate and the Entermedia Theater.

Jazz Forum Arts debuts

In 1985, he founded Jazz Forum Arts which presented the Riverside Park Arts Festival and continued to delight large audiences until August, 1997.

Twenty-three years ago, he moved his family and possessions to Westchester County, and shortly thereafter, introduced what would become a long-running jazz series at the Tarrytown Music Hall.

Artists who have performed in this program include Ahmad Jamal, Billy Taylor, Harry “Sweets” Edison, James Moody, Lionel Hampton, Betty Carter, Gerry Mulligan, Herbie Mann, Sonny Rollins, Clark Terry, Maynard Ferguson, Dave Brubeck, Chuck Mangione, and the Count Basie and Duke Ellington Orchestras. Subsequently, he would create and direct the Tarrytown Arts Festival.

Morganelli continued to play a producer’s role in creating the Sunnyside and Berkshire Jazz Festivals and was the producer of Reckson Jazz at Tilles at C.W. Post College in Greenvale, Long Island for nine years.

More recently he has organized concerts at the Paramount Center in Peekskill, the Palace Theatre in Stamford, CT, NJPAC, The John Harms Center in Englewood, NJ, the Performing Arts Center at Purchase College, SUNY, The Beacon Theatre, and The Town Hall in New York City.

Morganelli also produced the Dizzy Gillespie 75th Birthday Concert at Carnegie Hall and co-produced the Jazz Beats Breast Cancer concert at Avery Fisher Hall. In 2005, he launched a new concert series at Jazz at Lincoln Center.

He performed at the 1976 Montreux Jazz Festival, the 1992 and 1994 Syracuse Jazz Festivals, the Du Maurier Downtown Toronto Jazz Festival, JVC/NY and the Saratoga Jazz Festivals.

He has made many international tours and hosted nightly shipboard jam sessions on QE2 cruises to the Newport Jazz Festival. He currently performs with his Jazz Forum All-Stars in and around the Westchester County area and has released My Romance, his fourth CD as leader.

Morganelli was born in Chincoteague, Virginia and raised in Glen Head, Long Island.

The sale of Moganelli’s home at 248 Clinton Avenue in Dobbs Ferry is being handled by brokers Kathleen Bowen Ha and Kathie Briskin at Douglas Elliman Real Estate in Scarsdale, 914-723-6800.

Donations to support Jazz Forum Arts’ community involvement which includes 40 free summer concerts can be made by mailing a check to Jazz Forum Arts, P.O. Box 172, Dobbs Ferry, NY 10522.

More information about Jazz Forum Arts is available at www.jazzforumarts.org, 914-631-1000.

Photo: Dave Brubeck (left) with Mark Morganelli, Executive Director, Jazz Forum Arts