53rd Anniversary Season - 2025-2026

Thanks to our audience members and our listeners around the globe for your loyalty and friendship over the past 5 decades.  Aardvark was honored to be featured in Downbeat in their wonderful story about our 50th season.
http://www.aardvarkjazz.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Aard-DB-Feature-March-2023-p-21.pdf
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“Stunningly beautiful and adventurous” - New York City Jazz Record
"One of the best jazz ensembles in the world”  - Jazz Podium (Germany)
"Lush sonorities and a saxophonic blend worthy of Ellington’s finest reed sections."   - JazzTimes
"Exuberance, imagination and sheer brio."  - Jazz Review (UK)
"Expansive harmony, brilliant music... discipline, openness, and freedom… an exceptional big band."    -CultureJazz.Fr (France) ​

Aardvark's CD, Faces of Souls (Leo Records) is available here:
noteworthysheetmusic.com/cds/804-cd-faces-of-souls-aardvark-jazz-orchestra

40th Season Celebration, Museum of Fine Arts Boston

​Founded in 1973, The Aardvark Jazz Orchestra has been a force in the international jazz scene for more than 50 years - one of the longest-running large jazz ensembles in the world.  The band is acclaimed for its wide-ranging shows, from originals by founder/director Mark Harvey to classics and rarities by Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Mary Lou Williams, Miles Davis, John Coltrane and other jazz legends. Aardvark has given premieres of 200 works for jazz orchestra, performs widely, and appears on 16 CDs, including 10 discs from Leo Records, one of the world’s leading adventuresome music labels.  Guest artists who have appeared with Aardvark include jazz luminaries Jaki Byard, Sheila Jordan, Ricky Ford, Jay Clayton, Jimmy Giuffre, Geri Allen, Raj Mehta, Dominique Eade, and Lewis Porter, to name a few.

Composer/trumpeter ​Mark Harvey, winner of the 2019 Roy Haynes Award, is the founder and music director of the Aardvark Jazz Orchestra. Harvey has performed in major venues including Fenway Park and Symphony Hall, Boston, the Knitting Factory and the Village Gate (NYC), the National Gallery of Art (DC), the Left Bank Jazz Society (MD), the Southern California Institute of Architecture (CA), the Berlin Jazz Festival (Germany), and the Baja State Theater (Mexico).  His musical credits also include recordings with George Russell’s Living Time Orchestra (Blue Note), and Baird Hersey & the Year of the Ear (Arista/Novus) and appearances with Gil Evans, Howard McGhee, Sam Rivers, Claudio Roditi, and other notables. 
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Harvey has received commissions from the Meet the Composer/Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Commissioning Program, the 15th Annual John Coltrane Memorial Concert, FiLmprov, the  the MIT Sesquicentennial Celebration, Organization of American Kodaly Educators,and the MIT Festival Jazz and Wind Ensembles, among others.   In 2015, Dr. Harvey was named Boston Jazz Hero by the Jazz Journalists Association, one of 24 jazz advocates/activists recognized nationally.  Dr. Harvey is Senior Lecturer in Music Emeritus at MIT, where he taught jazz studies for 40 years.

Members of The Aardvark Jazz Orchestra perform regularly with the stellar FiLmprov ensemble, blending live improvisation with captivating animated films by Kate Matson.  Visit FiLmprov.

" “It’s great music.  Aardvark have an eloquence in their improvisation written inside the art of orchestration.  A pity
Duke and The Count can’t hear where their great art form has gotten to.”     - What’s New Jazz Magazine (United Kingdom)

"Aardvark suggests the best and the brashest of Charles Mingus, Gil Evans, George Russell, and even Frank Zappa."   - JazzTimes

"Awe-inspiring audience fascination"  - Downbeat

Visit Aardvark's website
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 The Aardvark Jazz Orchestra performs Mark Harvey's No Walls
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m4ytPw7Kwbv
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Aardvark Jazz Orchestra Vocalist Grace Hughes

Aardvark Jazz Orchestra Trombone section

Aardvark Jazz Orchestra

Photos:  Erlyn Ordinario, Kate Matson, Joe Harrington, Alexander Verhave