The Ken Schaphorst Big Band and the NEC Jazz Orchestra will perform on Wednesday, November 6 at The Regattabar, Charles Hotel, 1 Bennett St., Cambridge. Both groups will be led by acclaimed composer, performer and Jazz Studies Co-Chair Schaphorst, continuing the club’s big band series. The first set starts at 7:30 p.m. Created in 1989, the Ken Schaphorst Big Band has been extending the boundaries of large ensemble jazz for over three decades. Formed in Boston, the group features many of today's most notable young performers, including Ralph Alessi, Chris Cheek, Uri Caine, John Medeski, Donny McCaslin and Matt Wilson. Schaphorst's compositions and arrangements draw on the traditions of big band jazz while at the same time opening up new possibilities through the incorporation of a wide range of musical influences. Ken Schaphorst is an internationally acclaimed composer, performer, and educator. As CoChair of the Jazz Studies Department at NEC, he teaches courses in jazz composition, arranging, theory and analysis as well as directing the NEC Jazz Orchestra. Before moving to Boston in 2001, he served for ten years as Director of Jazz Studies at Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisconsin. Schaphorst is also a founding member of the Jazz Composers Alliance, a Bostonbased non-profit corporation promoting new music in the jazz idiom since 1985. Schaphorst studied at Swarthmore College, NEC, and Boston University, where he received the Doctor of Musical Arts in 1990. His composition teachers have included Thomas Oboe Lee, Gerald Levinson, William Thomas McKinley and Bernard Rands. Schaphorst was awarded Composition Fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts in 1988 and 1991, the Wisconsin Arts Board in 1997, Meet the Composer Grants in 1987 and 1997, and was a Music Composition Finalist in the Massachusetts Fellowship Program in 1986. He won the Achievement Award for Jazz Education from DownBeat magazine in 2007. Schaphorst has released seven recordings as a leader: Ken Schaphorst Big Band: Making Lunch (1989), Ken Schaphorst Big Band: After Blue (1991), Ken Schaphorst Ensemble: When the Moon Jumps (1994), Ken Schaphorst: Over the Rainbow (1997), Ken Schaphorst Big Band: Purple (1999), Ken Schaphorst: Indigenous Technology (2002) and Ken Schaphorst Big Band: How to Say Goodbye (2016). Founded by Eben Tourjée in Boston, Massachusetts in 1867, the New England Conservatory (NEC) represents a new model of music school that combines the best of European tradition with American innovation. The school stands at the center of Boston’s rich cultural history and musical life, presenting concerts at the renowned Jordan Hall. Propelled by profound artistry, bold creativity and deep compassion, NEC seeks to amplify musicians’ impact on advancing our shared humanity, and empowers students to meet today’s changing world head-on, equipped with the tools and confidence to forge multidimensional lives of artistic depth and relevance.