The Academy Street Winds will put the zoo in Kalamazoo with a spring concert titled “Animal Crackers” at 8 p.m. this Friday. It’s one of two Kalamazoo College music ensembles scheduled to perform this weekend in Dalton Theater at Light Fine Arts.

This spring concert will feature pieces about animals, from Eric Whitacre’s The Seal Lullaby to Lion King Highlights by Elton John. Music Professor Tom Evans, serving as the ensemble’s conductor, will weave the animal world together from sky to land and sea to convey that animals provide us with great benefits we would otherwise miss in our lives.

The Academy Street Winds provides a performance outlet for woodwind, brass and percussion students. Community musicians joined the ensemble in winter 2016 to expand the group’s sound and capabilities.

The group performs one concert each term, playing exciting arrays of challenging band music. The ensemble is a favorite of audiences as the programs are coordinated around diverse themes, which allow for performances of much-loved pieces, both classic and contemporary.

A second ensemble, known for encouraging audience members to dance and twist at performances, will invoke a theme of “Dizzying” this weekend.

K’s Jazz Band will perform at 8 p.m. Saturday. This band, also directed by Evans, pulls together an eclectic collection of contemporary and classic jazz arrangements to provide both the student performers and the audience with an electric experience.

Evans, in an International Jazz Day interview, said the band’s play list will include some early jazz, swing, bop, fusion, funk and Latin varieties. Hear past performances through the music department’s Jazz Band website.

For more information on either spring concert, please contact Susan Lawrence in the Music Department at 269.337.7070 or susan.lawrence@kzoo.edu.