Members of the University of Mississippi Faculty Jazz Ensemble are tuning up to jam at a free show at Proud Larry’s on Wednesday night.

“The idea behind it is to promote live jazz in Oxford,” said Scott Carradine the owner of Proud Larrys. “We have a tremendous jazz department at Ole Miss that doesn’t get out and play publicly enough in town.”

This is the second part of a jazz performance series at Larry’s that began when student Jazz combos performed on October fourth. According to Carradine, the student performance garnered a packed house.

“Most people who come out who come out to hear jazz on purpose enjoy what they hear and those who just kind of drop in are surprised that they have such a good time,” said Dr. Michael Worthy, who teaches instrumental music education at the University and plays trombone in the ensemble.

He plays along with fellow music professors John Latartara on guitar, Ricky Burkhead on the drums,  Daniel Roebuck on the trumpet, and Greg Johnson, who oversees the Blues archive in the University of Mississippi Library, on the bass.

“Playing music with friends, there’s nothing like it on the planet, it’s the most fun thing that I do,” Worthy said.  He has been playing the trombone since he was eighteen years old. He grew up listening to jazz records with his father and played in his first ensemble in the 7th grade.

The UM Faculty Jazz ensemble grew out of a conversation on improvisation between Worthy and Latartara who began playing together as a duo at cocktail parties. The band formalized into a quintet over the years that now regularly performs concerts within the music department, at University functions, and at private social engagements.

Latartara said he is looking forward to Wednesday night’s performance so that the band can play a longer set and get into some crunchier jams. Latartara, who has played guitar for 28 years, said that the best part of playing with the group is reading his fellow bandmates and following the tunes.

“A lot of it is improvised so we’re never sure who’s going to solo next or how long the solos are going to be or what they’re going to do so you have to sort of react within the moment,” he explained. “It’s really just the communication between all of us when we’re performing that I really love.”

The band has been rehearsing and discussing the set list for Wednesday night’s show for a couple of weeks now. He says they sometimes discuss solos, but mostly they just play the song and see what happens.

“Since we’ve been playing together for a few years now we sort of can hear what each of us is doing and read that pretty well,” he said.

As a professor of music theory and tech at the university since 2003, he has come a long way from when one of his first guitar teachers introduced him to Miles Davis. He hopes to foster a similar love for the music at their shows, stating that it is rare to hear live jazz in Oxford.

“Hearing live music is the best musical education you can have, it’s not like a recording or reading through a score or something on your own,” Latartar explained, “Hearing live music is really the best way to learn and understand a certain genre of music”

The event is cover free and the band will start at 8 p.m.