An NIU professor of music will perform his own jazz compositions tonight with the help of 25 music students.

Antonio Garcia, assistant professor and coordinator of jazz studies, will perform at 8:00 p.m. in the Recital Hall of the School of Music. The concert will feature Garcia on the bass and tenor trombone.

“The students (assisting) will be in groups of a variety of shapes and sizes,” Garcia said.

The groups will range in size from as small as a jazz quartet to as large as a pit orchestra, he said .

“Not every piece on the program is jazz either. One will be vocal with an orchestra and also a trombone quartet,” Garcia said.

This kind of program requires a lot of coordination, he said.

Vocalist Desiree Colonna, a music student, said, “I will be singing with an ensemble of 12 people.”

She said she will be singing a piece written by Garcia and titled “Missing You.” She said it is a beautiful piece.

“It is sort of a Broadway slow tune about this girl who’s sitting under the moon thinking about her lover,” Colonna said.

Pianist John Blasucci said he will be playing five pieces ranging from a jazz, a waltz, a samba to a dixieland composition.

“I will be playing in groups of three to six with trumpet, trombone, bass, drum and saxaphone players,” he said.

Garcia said he enjoys playing. He also said he gave mini-concerts last semester.

“I don’t think any group, at this date, has played any of my compositions though,” Garcia said.

This will be an opportunity to showcase his material, he said.

Garcia is an alumnus of the Eastman School of Music and of Loyola University of the South.

Garcia said as a composer and arranger he has received honors from the National Association of Jazz Educators, the Notre Dame Collegiate Jazz Festival and the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers. He also is a winner of a $1,000 commission in an open competiton sposored by The National Endowment for the Arts in 1986.

Garcia said, “This concert will be the local premiere of my compositions.”

This past year he was cited by DownBeat magazine as a musician deserving wider recognition.”

Garcia produced and edited the digital album. The New Orleans Brass Quintet. He also produced live concert broadcasts for a New York radio station.

He said he teaches jazz compositions, theory, a music course and directs a lab band in addition to arranging.