"I want to impress upon the listening public that this is the end of an era for New York Voices — the chance of a lifetime to hear them live," says Gold Company director Greg Jasperse.
The acclaimed vocal jazz quartet New York Voices joins Western Michigan University's Gold Company for two concerts this Friday and Saturday, April 10–11, at 7:30 p.m. in the Dalton Center Recital Hall. The performances mark a historic milestone: New York Voices is retiring at the end of 2026 after a career spanning nearly four decades, making these their final appearances in Kalamazoo as WMU Jazz Masters guest artists.
Speaking from Boston, where the group is currently on tour, members Darmon Meader and Lauren Kinhan join Jasperse and Cara Lieurance to reflect on a relationship with Gold Company that stretches back to 1988. That year, then-Gold Company director Steve Zegree discovered the group — before they even had a record deal — at a Greenwich Village club called Visiones and invited them to Kalamazoo as the first stop on their debut tour.
For Jasperse, the connection is deeply personal. "I was a student here, sitting in those seats, when the New York Voices made their second appearance in Kalamazoo," he says. "And it literally changed my life."
The concerts will feature New York Voices both as an ensemble and in individual spotlights alongside Gold Company students. Kinhan speaks to the meaning of that exchange. "We get to sip from their youthful cup as well as they get to drink from our deep, lived story," she says. "We are really passing the baton to them in this setting."
Friday and Saturday's programs will also feature the WMU faculty trio — Matthew Fries, Carla de Rosa, and Keith Hall — performing alongside the visiting quartet. Meader notes that the group is using the farewell tour to revisit arrangements they haven't performed in 20 or 25 years, offering audiences a rare retrospective of their catalog of roughly 170 charts.
Tickets are available at wmich.edu/music/events, though walk-up availability is not guaranteed as sales are moving quickly.
The interview was summarized by Claude AI and edited by the author.
