VOSBEIN MAGEE BIG BAND
New faces in modern music
Be on the lookout for news of our tenth anniversary season in 2025
A professional big band centered in Lexington, Virginia, the Vosbein Magee Big Band features the area’s best jazz musicians playing music that you can’t hear anywhere else.
Composer/arranger Terry Vosbein and trumpeter Chris Magee have been collaborating for many years. Gig after gig they talked about putting a band together. Finally, in the summer of 2015, it all began.
OUR DEBUT CD
The Vosbein Magee Big Band is excited to release our first CD, a live concert recording available from Max Frank Music.
Additionally, the sheet music from the entire album is avaialble.
Come and Get It! (Max Frank Music – 008) is the first release by the dynamic VOSBEIN MAGEE BIG BAND. The band is co-led by Terry Vosbein, who composed and arranged most of the 14 selections. The exceptions are two originals by reed player Greg Moody, and one by co-leader/trumpeter Chris Magee. Vosbein also provided arrangements for Janis Ian’s “At Seventeen” and the “Washington and Lee Swing,” the fight song for Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia, the home base for the band where Vosbein is a Professor in the Music Department. Vosbein is a creative composer and arranger. On this album, he explores a variety of moods, always with a swing underpinning. His charts leave adequate space for the fine soloists on the band. If you come and get Come and Get It, you are in for some first rate big band sounds.
Check out Patrick Hinely's review of the band in Cadence Magazine
UPCOMING GIGS
Look for us in Salem and Staunton in the summer of 2025
Details TBA
RECENT PERFOMANCES
Annual Joint Concert
With the University Jazz Ensemble
Washington and Lee University, Lexington VA
Thursday, 7 November 2024, 8:00pm
Video link coming soon
Washington and Lee University
Lexington, VA
Featuring the guitar and compositions of
Royce Campbell
9 November 2024
Stay tuned for details on the upcoming CD
Jazz in July
Featuring the compositions and guitar of
ROYCE CAMPBELL
Longwood Park, Salem VA
20 July 2024
VIDEO
Washington and Lee University
Lexington, VA
9 November 2023
VIDEO
Tom Artwick
Tom Lundberg and Tom McKenzie
Eli Goldstein
Somewhere along the way he got a few degrees, wrote some symphonies and found himself in Lexington, Virginia, where he serves as Professor of Music..
In 2008 he spent seven months living in Paris and Copenhagen creating music for twenty-piece big band. The results can be found on his first CD, Progressive Jazz 2009, featuring the Knoxville Jazz Orchestra (Max Frank Music).
The critically acclaimed performance of Vosbein’s modern arrangements of the music from “Sweeney Todd” is available on the CD, Fleet Street, once again featuring the fabulous Knoxville Jazz Orchestra.
And his jazz nonet disc, La Chanson Française, which features several members of the Vosbein Magee Big Band, has been receiving airplay coast to coast.
CHRIS MAGEE’S solid trumpet playing has been featured in big bands, orchestras, rock and salsa bands, and much more. As a busy free-lance trumpeter, he played lead trumpet for artists such as Aretha Franklin, Wayne Newton, The Temptations, The Four Tops, and the O'Jays, and he was staff trumpeter and arranger at Walt Disney World in Orlando. He is principal trumpet with the Lynchburg Symphony. Whether he is soaring above the band as the lead trumpeter, or gracefully improvising over intricate harmonies, his performances are stellar.
Magee is in demand as a clinician and guest conductor around the east coast, including guest director of the VBODA District 16 All-District Jazz Ensemble and the Delaware All-State Jazz Ensemble.
As Assistant Professor of Music at University of Lynchburg, Magee is Director of Jazz Studies. He teaches trumpet at UL, as well as courses in music appreciation and music technology. He received the Doctor of Musical Arts degree from the University of Iowa and Bachelor and Master of Music degrees from James Madison University.