" data-original-title="" title="">Jiggs Whigham, an American trombonist and educator from Cleveland, Ohio, who has lived in Germany (most of the time) since 1965, was on the last leg of a two-week tour of the States and would board a plane for home the following day.

Before departing, BuJazzO made sure it gave the small but enthusiastic audience at the Lensic Theatre (the event was not especially well-advertised) an evening to remember. The orchestra played two sets with seven extended numbers in the first, five more (plus an encore) comprising the second. Whigham played trombone on one selection, "Steve," an elegy for a departed friend, composer / arranger Steve Gray, who died in September 2008 at age sixty-six. BuJazzO set the concert in motion with one of Gray's compositions, "Open the Box," and closed the second set with his strapping arrangement of the standard "Shine." Of course, the audience wouldn't let them off so easily, and Whigham surrendered to the standing ovation by calling for an encore. "We'd like to play a ballad for you," he said, seconds before the orchestra launched into a warp-speed reading of