The University of Vermont Jazz Ensemble will perform one of the seminal works of Latin jazz, the Manteca Suite, Thursday night at 7:30 in the Recital Hall in the Music Building. The suite will feature new UVM faculty member Ray Vega on trumpet.

The concert is free and open to the public.

The Manteca Suite is based on a composition written by jazz trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie and Latin percussionist Chano Pozo in the late 1940s, one of first works that fused and popularized jazz and Latin styles. The composition was expanded into a four-part suite by the great Latin jazz arranger, Chico O'Farrell, for Gillespie's big band.

"The Manteca Suite is based on a composition written by jazz trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie and Latin percussionist Chano Pozo in the late 1940s, one of first works that fused jazz and Latin styles and popularized the new form," said Alex Stewart, director of UVM's Jazz Studies program, who conducts the Jazz Ensemble.

"Like the Afro Cuban Jazz Suite, O'Farrell's other magnum opus of Latin jazz, the Manteca Suite shifts among a variety of grooves and time feels from mambo and Afro to fast swing," he said.

The concert will also feature a contemporary piece by one of the leading jazz composers active today, Jim McNeely, called the Swedish Thing, that will also feature Vega.

The work is "unusual in that it combines counterpoint and sophisticated harmonies with a hip hop beat," Stewart said.

The Jazz Ensemble will also perform a variety of shorter pieces from the jazz and Latin jazz canon featuring student soloists, including works by the Count Basie, Buddy Rich, and Paquito D'Rivera orchestras. For more information, call 656-3040.