Convergence jazz trio at Parkfest Tuesday

Hines

Convergence jazz trio returns to Robe Ann Park Tuesday for an evening of music from The Great American Songbook played in classic jazz style. The free concert begins at 7 p.m. at the park's band shell. The concert series is co-sponsored by the Greencastle Civic League and Greencastle Parks and Recreation.

Led by Greencastle native Harry Maginity on bass, the group features well-known jazz-blues pianist Carl Hines and drummer Ray Cumberland is also a ballad singer. Maginity's wife Sue adds vocal talent to the musical mix.

Maginity is a bass player who enjoys the trio sound.

Cumberland

"I cut my teeth on these tunes at Maybelle Hamm's original Duck coffeehouse in the late '50s and early '60s. They never go out of style. There's always a new arrangement, a new improv and someone different playing it. The tunes are always new," he said.

Cumberland is a veteran Indiana Avenue's jazz heyday. He's worked with everyone from Freddie Hubbard to Slide Hampton and his sisters. An accomplished drummer, he is even more popular as a rich voiced ballad singer.

If you ask anybody around the Indianapolis music scene who the dean of jazz piano is, they'll either say Melvin Rhine or Carl Hines. Hines has an appealing straight-up style for progressive charts. He's sentimental on ballads and soulful on the blues. Request a song in the idiom and he probably knows it -- in all twelve keys.

Maginity

Thursday night Convergence will perform at Indianapolis' Holliday Park as a quartet with tenor sax lead. Later in July, the group -- as a trio -- renews a Saturday night schedule at Eddie Merlot's steakhouse on 96th Street.