Southeast Missouri State University's annual Jazz Series begins with "Meet the Band," and will feature members of Southeast's Studio Jazz Ensemble and Southeast's Jazz Lab Band, in addition to a jazz combo.

Senior Spencer Day, a music education and music performance major at Southeast, plays saxophone and will participate in the event hosted by Southeast's music department.

"I am excited about it," Day said. "This is my fifth year in the ensemble. I've been in it every semester, and this is my last semester. I am looking forward to showing what a great band we have."

Day said he loves to perform and wants to focus on that for right now, but would love to teach music in the future.

"Jazz is just something that comes easy to me -- just hearing it and trying to play along with it. There's just something about it," Day said.

According to Day, the jazz program always provides a good variety of music when performing. Day also said that Southeast has a good band this semester and is that he excited to see how they will sound at the performance.

Southeast music professor Robert Conger directs the Jazz program, including combos and ensembles, and is the organizer of the event.

"Jazz band is one of the ensembles that we have here at Southeast, and we perform to teach our students the art of musicianship," Conger said. "Some of the people in our ensemble play in the orchestra, in the concert band or they play in the jazz band."

The jazz ensembles present three formal concerts a year, including this event. The other concerts will be on Feb. 8, 2013 and April 18, 2013.

"We also play twice a semester at Buckner's," Conger said. "We played a week ago at Buckner, and it went great-- huge crowd, people screaming."

The next time they will play at Buckner Brewing Company will be Nov. 30.

Day said that when the band performs at Buckner Brewing Company, there is always a big turnout.

"A lot of teachers, and a lot of students are there and also a lot of the guys in the band who are in the music fraternity," Day said.

There are two jazz bands that perform at Buckner Brewing Company.

"Before they play, we play a combo, which is basically just when a couple more players take solos and trade back and forth the whole time," Day said. "That's my favorite part. That's always the fun part."

"Meet the Band" will be held at 7:30 p.m. Oct. 26 in the Donald C. Bedell Performance Hall. Tickets are $10 and are available through the River Campus box office at 573-651-2265, or at metrotix.com.