Thursday, April 22, 2021 • 12pm ET. Free event, register here. Mark Rotella, director of the Coccia Institute at Montclair State University, leads a discussion with Anna Celenza, professor of music at Georgetown University, and John Gennari, professor of English at the University of Vermont, on the impact and influence Italian Americans have had on jazz from its origins to the present day.

Their discussion will hit all the notes—the birth of jazz in New Orleans with Louis Prima and Louis Armstrong in the French Quarter and Little Palermo; New York City’s Swing Street and the Famous Door; the rise of jazz in Fascist Italy; and the influential postwar Italian American musicians and singers, such as Chick Corea, Scott LaFaro, Jimmy Giuffre, Jackie Paris, and Lennie Tristano.