IF YOU GO* What: The Holly Hofmann/Mike Wofford Quartet in concert.* When: 7:30 p.m. Sunday.* Where: UTC Fine Arts Center, corner of Vine and Palmetto streets.* Admission: $22 adults, $19 seniors, $15 students.* Phone: 425-4269.
Quick, name the most common instruments used in jazz music.
OK, trumpet, piano, drums, sax, clarinet, trombone, double bass. Others?
What about the flute?
Absolutely, says flutist Holly Hofmann, who is one-fourth of the Holly Hofmann/Mike Wofford Quartet, which will present an evening of jazz Sunday as part of the 30th annual UTC Patten Performances.
“I’m trying to take the flute out of that stereotypical role,” she said in a phone conversation from her San Diego home, “and bring it right to the fore of jazz instruments.”
Few could argue with her success. Critics have labeled Hofmann the most authoritative, swinging flutist in jazz today.
She refers to her style as straight-ahead jazz or mainstream jazz, as opposed to the pop jazz that some others play today, she said.
Its components include the art of improvisation over a melody, a move toward blue notes on the musical scale and a rhythmic component, Hofmann said.
Her discography includes 12 recordings as a leader in the duo or quartet setting, she said, but she’s not particular.
“It doesn’t matter at all to me,” Hofmann said. “I like all configurations.”
Her newest CD, “Three’s Company,” is largely a duo with longtime collaborator Bill Cunliffe but even includes four cuts with guest artists. Two upcoming works are string projects, one with the music of Antonio Carlos Jobim (composer of “The Girl From Ipanema”).
In Chattanooga, Hofmann will be playing with her husband, Mike Wofford, who was music director and pianist for such jazz luminaries as Sarah Vaughan and Ella Fitzgerald.
“He has had an incredible career with every important artist in the business,” she said. “(He has) a well-chosen, sparse kind of style. All the people he played with loved him. He is never in the way of other musicians.”
Their program, Hofmann said, will be a mix of their jazz/blues compositions and similar standards people know from jazz artists such as Duke Ellington, George Gershwin, and Rogers and Hart in their interpretation of the Great American Songbook.