(WAYNE, NJ) -- WP Presents has announced the lineup for its 2025 Summer Jazz Room Series at the Shea Center for Performing Arts, which takes place from July 21-25. The season includes performances by The Dan Pugach Big Band, Manuel Valera and New Cuban Express, April May Webb and Sounds of A & R, The Dayne Stephens Quartet, and Wycliffe Gordon and Friends.
Tickets for all performances are available for purchase online or by calling the Box Office at (973) 720-2371. The Shea Center for Performing Arts is located on the campus of William Paterson University at 300 Pompton Road in Wayne, New Jersey.
Monday, July 21, 2025 at 7:30pm - The Dan Pugach Big Band - Composer and drummer Dan Pugach brings his big band to Shea for the very first time this summer, featuring music from his 2025 GRAMMY® Award-winning album Bianca Reimagined: Music for Paws and Persistence, featuring Nicole Zuratis. This adds to his growing list of awards as a composer, which include ASCAP Foundation Jazz Composer Award, and the BMI Charlie Parker Composition Prize. He also played drums on the 2024 GRAMMY® Award-winning album How Love Begins. Pugach, who was born in Isreal and has spent time in Rio de Janeiro and Boston before moving to our area, also leads a nonet, which along with his big band, performs in well-established NYC venues and at international festivals and performing arts centers.
Tuesday, July 22, 2025 at 7:30pm - Manuel Valera and New Cuban Express - Born and raised in Havana, pianist, composer and Guggenheim Fellow Manuel Valera is a well-established NYC musician. He has collaborated as a pianist and composer with artists such as Arturo Sandoval, Paquito D’Rivera, Brian Lynch, Dafnis Prieto, the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, Jeff “Tain” Watts, John Benitez, Samuel Torres, Yosvany Terry, and classical violin virtuoso Joshua Bell. Valera has released 18 albums as a bandleader including with New Cuban Express, a trio, the New Cuban Express Big Band, and playing solo piano works. Along with the Guggenheim Fellowship in 2019, he has been awarded three Chamber Music America New Jazz Works grants, two Dranoff International Piano Foundation commissions, and the ASCAP Young Jazz Composer Award. He has performed in more than 30 countries at some of the world’s most prominent international venues and festivals.
Wednesday, July 23, 2025 at 7:30pm - April May Webb and Sounds of A & R - Named “Best Jazz Group” at the 2019 New York City Reader’s Jazz Awards, Sounds of A&R (S.O.A.R.) is the creation of the husband-and-wife duo, vocalist April May Webb and trumpeter Randall Haywood. Both are rising artists: Webb won the 2024 Sarah Vaughan International Jazz Vocal Competition, while Haywood was recognized as the "Male Rising Star" at the Hot House and Jazzmobile NYC Reader's Jazz Awards. They have represented the United States as Cultural Ambassadors and have received a grant from Chamber Music America. Their third studio album, Questions Left Unanswered, reached #12 on the National Jazz Week charts and was featured in Jazz Week’s Top 50 Jazz Albums of the Year.
Thursday, July 24, 2025 at 7:30pm - The Dayna Stephens Quartet - One of today’s best-known tenor saxophonists, Dayna Stephens is an in-demand bandleader and sideman, lauded for his lyrical style and rhythmic explorations as both a player and composer. Raised in the Bay Area and educated at Berklee College of Music and the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz, he was the first-place recipient of the 2019 DownBeat Critics Poll in the Rising Star–Tenor Saxophone category. Over the past fifteen years, the prolific Stephens has released thirteen albums under his name, including his latest release Hopium and his 2024 album Closer Than We Think. He has toured and recorded with many renowned artists such as Kenny Barron, Julian Lage, Gerald Clayton, Linda Oh, Ambrose Akinmusire, and Al Foster. Stephens teaches at the Manhattan School of Music and William Paterson University.
Friday, July 25, 2025 at 7:30pm - Wycliffe Gordon and Friends - Wycliffe Gordon is one of today’s most outstanding trombonists. A composer and arranger as well, he has been in the limelight since 1988 when he joined the Wynton Marsalis Septet and subsequently the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra. Currently, Gordon tours the world as a soloist and with his own group; in 2018 he represented the US on State Department tour to Sri Lanka where he premiered a piece written for Sri Lanka’s 70th anniversary. He has 21 CDs as a leader, has been named the Jazz Journalist’s Association’s Trombonist of the Year 13 times and Downbeat’s Critic’s Poll six times. Recipient of numerous awards and honors, Gordon has an extensive catalog of original compositions, and his arrangement of the theme music of NPR’s “All Things Considered” is heard daily around the globe. He is also a committed music educator, serving as Director of Jazz Studies at Augusta University.
The Shea Center for Performing Arts is an intimate 922-seat theater built in 1965. The theater boasts a customized, state-of-the-art sound system, computerized lighting system and a unique seating/stage configuration that ensures a close performer/audience connection. Shea Center is air-conditioned and handicapped accessible
WP Presents! strives to bring to the William Paterson University campus high caliber touring artists across a range of disciplines including acoustic and world music, contemporary folk music, theatre, dance, family programming and other eclectic fare. The series is built on a foundation of excellence and continuously seeks innovative programming to serve the campus, and the community.
A multitude of artists including The 5th Dimension, Arlo Guthrie, Carl Palmer of Emerson Lake & Palmer, David Crosby, Darlene Love, DMC of Run DMC, Graham Nash, Johnny Ventura, Judy Collins, John Sebastian, Jim Messina, Los Lonely Boys, Pete Davidson, Roy Haynes, Robert Cray, Southside Johnny, and Wanda Sykes, have graced our stage. We have presented works from national theatre tours of The Second City, Moscow Ballet, Aquila Theatre Company, Literature to Life, TheaterWorks USA, Vital Theatre, and the National Theatre of the Deaf. All Family Performances are sensory friendly productions presented by a variety of artists and theater companies. Many of their visiting artists conduct educational outreach programs, for both the community at large and the University.
