Queens Jazz Orchestra Celebrates Jimmy Heath Centennial at Flushing Town Hall

The Queens Jazz Orchestra returns to Flushing Town Hall in Queens, New York, on Saturday, Nov. 7, 2026, at 8 p.m. for The Jimmy Heath Centennial Concert, a program built around the orchestral writing of the saxophonist, composer and NEA Jazz Master. According to the venue's event page, the orchestra, under the direction of saxophonist Antonio Hart, will perform Heath's orchestral compositions, "including works that have never been performed to the public."

The concert falls two weeks after what would have been Heath's 100th birthday. Born in Philadelphia on Oct. 25, 1926, Heath died on Jan. 19, 2020. Flushing Town Hall's notes recall that he performed with figures ranging from John Coltrane and Miles Davis to Tony Bennett, and that in 1975 he formed The Heath Brothers with bassist Percy Heath and drummer Albert "Tootie" Heath, a group that toured until 2010. The venue also stresses the local connection: Heath was a longtime Queens resident who lived in Corona for many years before he and his wife, Mona, moved to Loganville, Georgia. Members of the orchestra, it says, affectionately called him "Master Heath."

Hart's role is more than a conducting credit. Flushing Town Hall describes the Baltimore-born saxophonist as a protégé whom Heath personally chose to carry on his legacy through performances of his music. Hart earned a master's degree at Queens College, where he studied with Heath and trumpeter Donald Byrd, after attending the Baltimore School for the Arts and Berklee College of Music and touring with his classmate Roy Hargrove. His own discography includes the debut For the First Time (1991), the Grammy-nominated Here I Stand and For Cannonball and Woody (1993), and his sideman credits run from Dizzy Gillespie and McCoy Tyner to Dee Dee Bridgewater and Phil Woods.

For big-band listeners and directors, the draw is the repertoire itself. Heath was a prolific composer and arranger as well as a saxophonist, and a centennial program that puts his large-ensemble writing in front of an audience, with pieces the presenter says have not been heard publicly, is a rare chance to hear that side of his work played by musicians who knew him. Copies of his autobiography, I Walked With Giants: The Autobiography of Jimmy Heath, are to be on sale at the venue's gift shop on the night.

Advance general admission tickets are listed at $45 ($40 for members), rising to $50 on the day, with reserved tables for two also offered. Flushing Town Hall members are invited to a pre-show reception at 6:30 p.m. The venue's page does not publish a full set list, so specific titles, including which pieces will receive their first public performance, had not been announced as of publication.