Northwestern College will be hosting the famous clarinetist Doreen Ketchens and her jazz band, Doreen’s Jazz New Orleans, at Raider Days homecoming this Friday, Sept. 27. The band will perform at 8:30 p.m. on the campus green and will also a jazz workshop for music students at 4:30 p.m. in Christ Chapel.
Members in Doreen’s Jazz New Orleans band include herself on clarinet; her husband, Lawrence, on tuba; Dwayne Nelson on drums; Paul Kmnitz on guitar; and Pete Hittle on the trumpet.
Ketchens’ band has quite the reputation following them. It has produced 21 CDs and 3 DVDs. Doreen’s Jazz New Orleans has performed throughout the United States and in Africa, Asia, Europe, South America and Russia. The group has also had the privilege of performing for four U.S. presidents, including Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George Bush Sr. and Bill Clinton. Along with these prestigious performances, the band also plays at many schools to educate students of all languages on the culture and music of New Orleans.
Ketchens is connected to Orange City through Gary Bouma. Bouma grew up in Orange City and graduated from Northwestern. He taught at Unity Christian High School from 1964 through 1968 and at Dordt College from 1969 through 1985.
“I met Doreen in 2001, on the streets of New Orleans,” Bouma said. “I was there judging a music contest and happened to hear her band playing in the French Quarter while I was on break.”
In 2004, he hired her band to play at the Morningside Jazz Festival. They then began to talk about the possibility of Bouma’s Morningside Jazz Band going to New Orleans for a week and working with her.
Hurricane Katrina hit in the fall of 2005. It took Bouma a week after the hurricane to get in contact with Ketchens. Ketchens said her band had lost pretty much everything, and it really needed work.
Morningside, the Sioux City Public Schools, NW, Dordt and the University of South Dakota all agreed to host Doreen’s Jazz for concerts. An airline agreed to fly them to Sioux City, free of charge, and the media made an effort to let everyone know about them. The band stayed in Northwest Iowa for 10 days.
“The whole experience was incredible. The communities overwhelmed Doreen with their kindness and Doreen’s band overwhelmed us with their music,” Bouma said.
Ketchens’ group has since returned a few times to Orange City and has been a popular attraction each time. Doreen’s Jazz concert this weekend is being sponsored by the Orange City Arts Council, NW, Diamond Vogel Paint and Lee Ann Roetman.
“We brought (Doreen’s Jazz New Orleans) because one of my board members, Cheryl Kugler, absolutely loved Doreen’s Jazz when they were here after Hurricane Katrina,” Janine Calsbeek, a member of the Orange City Arts Board, said. “The music department, Aaron Beadner, Mark Bloemendaal and all of NW loved the idea of Doreen being here for homecoming weekend.”
Doreen’s Jazz New Orleans concert will take place on the green in front of Christ Chapel or inside Christ Chapel if there is rain. Admission to the event is free and open to all faculty, staff, students and family members, but the suggested donation is $5.
