SARASOTA JAZZ

What’s Inside

President’s Letter .........................2

Sounds Staff ...................................2

Board of Directors ..................... .2

Satchmo 2016: Wycliffe Gordon............................3

Satchmo Award Winners ..........3

How I met Hal Davis ....................4

Jazz Cruise 2017. ..........................5

Eddie Metz Trio, January 15 ......6

Valentine’s Dinner Dance ..........7

2016 Jazz Festival .................. .8-9

Deep friendship and musical careers come full circle in Sarasota ............ 10-11

Benefit Dinner, January 10 ...... 12

Joy of Jazz Concerts ................ 12

Sarasota Jazz Project Big Band ........................ 13

Starlite Players ............................ 14

Michael Lazaroff Day ................ 14

Happy 100th to Svend.............. 15

Thank you to our volunteers ............................. 15

Membership Application ......... 16

Join us! Membership application on page 16

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330 S. Pineapple Avenue, Suite 111 Sarasota, Florida 34236

jazzclubsarasota.com

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Sounds Staff

Editor

Peg Pluto

Contributors

Carline Ash

Richard Bergere

Ken Franckling

Gordon Garrett

Susan Leavis

Don Mopsick

Jazz Club Board of Directors

Peg Pluto President

Gordon Garrett Vice President

Susan Leavis Treasurer

Directors

*Dave Walrath Immediate Past President

*Carolyn Evans Curry

Susan Leavis

Ed Linehan

Sandy Livon

George McLain

*Nancy Roucher

Norm Vagn

Bob Weitz

Honorary Board Members

Dick Hyman

*Bob Seymour

*Life Member

President’s Letter

A full year has gone by since I took over as your president. I hope you have enjoyed the year as much as I have. We

are looking forward to our 36th annual Jazz Festival which promises to be very exciting. Many of you will be joining some of our board members and me for the 2016 Jazz Cruise, leaving on January 17th, when we set sail for the Caribbean.

We recently received our check from the Community Foundation for the Giving Challenge which took place early September. So many of you contributed and it did not matter if it was $25 or $250, it was doubled by a select group of donors. The money will be placed in a scholarship fund. If anyone missed the opportunity of giving at this time, it’s never too late to make a donation to help our musical youth of today. Just send in your donation, mark the check for the scholarship fund and Carline will place your donation in that account. Carline can send you a 501C statement for tax purposes.

Donations can also be made for a specific event such as an evening concert, The Jazz Festival, Jazz at Two, etc. Or if you wish to sponsor an event, make a donation in the name of a loved one, or a deceased member of your family, just pick up the phone: 941-366-1552 and let Carline help you through the process. Any amount is appreciated. You can also donate anonymously.

Please be sure to read through Sounds very carefully, as we have many new programs coming your way. The annual Valentine Dinner Dance will once again be held at Marina Jacks in the Bayfront Room from 5:30 p.m. for cocktails and complimentary appetizers and at 6:30 p.m. Patricia Dean will create a special evening for all. Tickets are $50.00 per person and can be purchased at Jazz at Two or through the office Wednesday-Friday, 9 a.m. – 5:00 p.m.

I would like to thank all of the volunteers who helped make our recent Oktoberfest a huge success. We will have our 2nd Oktoberfest a little later next October. Volunteers are very important to us as they are the glue of every event. Mark your calendar for Wednesday, January 13 at the Art Center for some wonderful Latin Jazz with Andres Colin. Information on all future events is available online or at Jazz at Two.

Have you had the opportunity to take a look at our new web site? We are still in the process of making changes and if you have any input you would like to share with a member of the board please feel free to contact us. We could use a volunteer with computer background.

Happy Holidays to all,

Peg Pluto, President

“ Jazz and freedom go hand in hand.”-Thelonius Monk

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Satchmo Award Winners1987 ......................................................George Wein

1988 ..........................................................Milt Hinton

1989 ....................................................Ella Fitzgerald

1990 ................................................... Duke Ellington

1991 ..............................................................Hal Davis

1992 .................................................Lionel Hampton

1993 ................................................... Gerry Mulligan

1994 ....................................................Dr. Billy Taylor

1995 ............................................ Marian McPartland

1996 ...................................................... Joe Williams

1997 ............................................... George Shearing

1998 .....................................................Dave Brubeck

1999 ...................................................... Bob Haggart

2000 ................................................... Jerry Roucher

2001 ........................................................Dick Hyman

2002 .....................................................Jerry Jerome

2003 ...................................Bucky & John Pizzarelli

2004 .....................................................John LaPorta

2005 ........................Cleo Laine & John Dankworth

2006 ................................................... Pete Fountain

2007 ............................................... Peter Appleyard

2008 .............................Branford Marsalis & Family

2009 ....................................................James Moody

2010 ...................................................Four Freshman

2011 .................................................... John Pizzarelli

2012 ............................................... Svend Asmussen

2013 ..........................................................John Lamb

2014 ................................................... Ken Peplowski

2015 .....................................Lillette Jenkins-Wisner

2016 .................................................. Wycliff Gordon

Satchmo 2016: Wycliffe Gordon ■ Performance experience includes work with Dizzy

Gillespie, Lionel Hampton, Tommy Flanagan, Shirley Horn, Joe Henderson, Eric Reed, Randy Sandke and Branford Marsalis, plus many top players from the swing and traditional jazz world

■ Compositions performed by the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, Wycliffe Gordon and Friends, the Brass Band of Battle Creek and numerous other ensembles, and performed in programs throughout the U.S. and abroad.

Wycliffe is one of the nation’s foremost music educators having held positions at Juilliard School of Music, Michigan State School of Music and currently at Manhattan School of Music in the Jazz Arts program. He was selected as DownBeat Magazine’s Critics Choice for the best trombonist in 2012, 2013 and 2014. Wycliffe has had a remarkable career which includes membership in the Wynton Marsalis Septet and the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra. He is regularly featured as guest faculty teacher clinician and conductor for many state festivals, the Louis Armstrong Summer Jazz Camp, the International Trombone Festival and countless other high school and university programs. He is also a prolific composer of jazz and gospel music.

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How I met Hal Davis (The Jazz Club’s Founding Father)By Don Mopsick

By 1986 I had already been in Florida for 9 years. I was graduated from the Manhattan School of Music in May,

1977 and immediately moved down to Ft. Myers to take a steady 6-night-a-week music job there. By 1983 I made the move to the Orlando area and soon thereafter landed a staff job at Disney World.

In those days Orlando had a wealth of accomplished jazz players, a few of them holding down full-time positions at one of the Disney theme parks. The biggest jazz star in Orlando was the great drummer Mousey Alexander. A teeny bit of a guy, Mousey had toured and recorded with Benny Goodman for over 15 years, played a long

New York residency at the Half Note with Al Cohn and Zoot Sims, and was often hired by such leaders as Clark Terry, Sauter/Finegan and Doc Severinsen to provide his happy, swinging propulsion to their big bands.

Mousey was a member of very rarefied elite of top swinging jazz drummers, but in 1980 he suffered a stroke and heart attack that left him paralyzed on one side. He decided to slow down, rehabilitate and move to

Longwood, FL near Orlando. He continued to play drums. He organized a Monday night jam session at a series of night clubs and restaurants in the area. Mousey’s Monday nights became the epicenter of the jazz scene in Orlando, where players could get known, network, and sit in with Mousey and the best players in town.

After I got to town Mousey invited me to play some of the Monday jams. I became a regular and got to play other gigs, concerts and jazz cruises with Mousey. Then one day in 1986 he invited me to go down to Sarasota to play a concert with him for the Jazz Club of Sarasota. Mousey’s friend Hal Davis had founded the club in 1980. Hal had been Benny Goodman’s publicist, and the two men had a long professional and personal association and friendship. Hal was then executing his plan of greatly expanding the club’s membership by presenting quality concerts featuring the great swinging players he had known in New York, among them many Goodman Band alumni.

Hal was a master of promotion—he had been the president of a major New York advertising and PR firm. Right on his concert program notes Hal would include a short paragraph introducing the featured artist for the next concert, along with a short explanation: “These artists are new (to you),” but nonetheless the member

would be rewarded for discovering them. In this way Hal educated his membership and provided the artistic leadership that built the brand of the Jazz Club of Sarasota into what it eventually became by the time of his passing in 1990: one of the largest and most active jazz societies in the United States.

After my first Jazz Club of Sarasota concert with Mousey, Hal hired me for many more. He was very encouraging to me. He told me, “All of the guys I’ve brought down from New York have told me how much they enjoyed your playing.” The feeling was mutual. Clearly I had found a home. Before my eventual move to San Antonio in 1991 I was privileged to appear at Sarasota Middle School and Van Wezel Hall, almost on a monthly basis, it seemed, with some of the true greats of swinging jazz: Don Lamond, Don Goldie, Spanky Davis, Dick Meldonian, Bob Rosengarden, Warren Vaché Jr., Scott Hamilton, Joe Wilder, John Bunch, Ira Sullivan, Ken Peplowski, and the late clarinetist Kenny Davern.

The Jim Cullum Jazz Band began auditioning bass fiddle players after the death in 1990 of Jack Wyatt, who had held the position for decades. For ideas on replacements, Cullum called his friend Kenny Davern, with whom I had by this time played at the Jazz Club of Sarasota. Davern recommended me for the job. On New Years Day 1991 my wife Rosie and I and our dog headed out for the long drive to San Antonio with all our possessions. For over 18 years I played nightly with Cullum’s band at the Landing Jazz Club on the Riverwalk in San Antonio and toured the US and abroad with them. I recorded many hours of radio shows with them and their guests, many of whom I already knew from the Jazz Club of Sarasota dates. I also got to work with and know Dick Hyman and Bob Haggart, both of whom settled in the Sarasota area.

Rosie and I made the return trip in 2010 to resettle in Cape Coral. Since then I have become reacquainted with the Jazz Club of Sarasota and some of its leaders who have taken over for Hal. One notable concert was in 2011 with the young swinging jazz violinist Aaron Weinstein at Holley Hall.

Another memorable appearance for me was introducing to the Jazz Club of Sarasota (at a “Fridays at Two”) the quintet with which I work in Naples and Fort Myers during the season, co-led by trumpeter Dan Miller and saxophonist Lew DelGatto. Coming up next October 16 and 17, I will be representing the Jazz Club of Sarasota leading a group of my favorite players from North Port and St. Petersburg, comprised of pianist Billy Marcus, drummer/vocalist Patricia Dean and trombone champion Herb Bruce, for the Ringling International Arts Festival “Jazz Sunsets on the Bay.”

Mousey Alexander

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36TH ANNUAL SARASOTA

Jazz FestivalMarch 6-12, 2016

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Trolley Pub CrawlWednesday, March 9 • 6-10:30 p.m.

VENUES & MUSICIANS:

Blue Rooster: Synia Carroll

Gator Club: Skip Conkling

Mandeville Beer Garden: Matt Bokulic

Salute’s: Al Hixon

Sarasota Wine Bar & Bistro: Brenda Watty

Servando’s: David Pruyn

Starlite: Bill Buchman

Z’s on Main: Steve Roiland

Admission: $15 in advance,

$20 evening of event.

Everyone will wear a wrist band for VIP seating at the venues. Trolley departs at 6 p.m. from the north end of the Van Wezel parking lot.

For tickets call 941.366.1552.

To purchase tickets call 800-838-3006 or online: www.brownpapertickets.com

All concerts are held at the Performing Arts Center at Riverview High School unless otherwise stated.

Valet parking available.

VIP Patron Package:

All Events, Backstage Pass & VIP Party at Mattison’s South on

Saturday, March 12 from 4:30-6:30 p.m.

VIP Patron all events: Members $175

Non-members $225

For VIP Patron tickets, please call The Jazz Club of Sarasota at 941-366-1552.

Sponsored by:

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Deep friendship and musical careers come full circle in SarasotaBy Ken Franckling

When multi-instrumentalist Dick Hamilton says he and trumpeter Jim Martin “have been friends since

forever” he isn’t exaggerating. They first met in junior high school in Sarasota in 1950 and played music together pretty much all the time through their high school years and a bit beyond. And it continues today.

“Our jazz education was from the records we heard,” says Hamilton. “It turned out just about everything we liked involved composers and arrangers from the West Coast.” He means California, not Florida’s Gulf Coast.

After graduating from Sarasota High School in 1956, the pair headed to Florida State University because it had a good music program. “We figured there might be somebody playing jazz,” Martin says. “Almost any hour of the day you could go into one of the music rooms and find someone to play with.”

Hamilton decided to major in composition, since he had been composing music since age 8, but he quickly determined that Florida State was too basic for his needs. He handed in a full composition for what had been a rudimentary writing assignment, only to have the professor tell him, “Oh no, you won’t be doing that until you’re a grad student.” So Hamilton left after the first semester to jump-start his own career.

Martin stayed in Tallahassee, looking for the right subject in which to major. He says he dabbled in physics, biology and history, but always found himself questioning the basic theories and fundamental assumptions of each subject area. One professor who recognized that underlying restlessness steered Martin toward philosophy as the root subject of understanding. Martin took to it right away. Majoring in philosophy, he got a bachelor’s degree, and then went to the University of Michigan to earn his doctorate. Martin, who had become an avid skier, then took faculty positions teaching philosophy at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire and the University of Wyoming. In each case, he also found musical gigs on

the side before retiring and returning to Sarasota 14 years ago with his wife, Susie.

Meantime, Hamilton went on the road with the Chicago-based Ralph Finnegan band in 1956, and co-led a quintet in the Windy City with alto saxophonist James Spaulding. He returned to Sarasota about 10 months later, and started working in a local bar band led by drummer Don Pendergast. At the end of Martin’s sophomore year at

FSU, Pendergast’s small band, with Martin in tow, decided to do something adventurous. They went to Europe for the summer on a whim, but none of them had enough money to return home. A booking agent got them a gig playing a series of U.S. officers’ clubs on military bases in Belgium, France, Spain and Switzerland. “Jim and I had a great time tooling around on a motorcycle, a month in each city,” Hamilton says. “We were 19, it was the perfect time.”

Martin returned to FSU after that 10-month European adventure, but Hamilton was welcomed home with a draft notice. He auditioned for the military service bands in Washington, D.C., and won a slot in the U.S. Navy Band as a player and composer-arranger. The Navy Band kept him busy, but he and his buddies also made time for private recordings of music

and commercials at a local studio. That experience gave him insights into the professional music world. He realized there was a lot of good work available in Los Angeles. After his four-year enlistment, he headed west. “Nine of us got out at the same time—and all decided we wanted to go to L.A.,” Hamilton said. They arrived in 1966 with four years of demo tapes in what was then a hotbed of activity for studio musicians, composers and arrangers.”

“There could be 20 major films being scored at the same time, each with a 90-piece orchestra. It was particularly easy for me,” he said. Hamilton’s first jazz recording in L.A. was playing on a July 1966 session by guitarist Joe Pass, The Stones Jazz, which featured Bob Florence arrangements of 10 tunes by The Rolling Stones. Hamilton says that recording on the Pacific Jazz label was meant

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Martin is loving their renewed collaboration. “Dick is one of the few guys who really understands what it means to have a musical conversation,” he says. ”Making music is more fun when you get to play what you like with players you like. That’s what retirement gives you.”

Hamilton agrees. “Even when we were separated by thousands of miles, Jim was still my best friend. We pick up on each other’s musical clues instantly. We find the same humor in things,” says Hamilton. “Now it is like being in school again without having to go to the school.”

to be a mere tax-writeoff for its corporate parent, Liberty Records, but it did much more for the young trombonist. “Next thing, the phone started ringing, and I started getting calls to sub for Milt Bernhardt and Frank Rosolino. Within two months, I had played for all of the music contractors and arrangers.

“This was the end of the golden age. Every TV variety show had a big band on it: ’The Hollywood Palace’, ‘Bob Hope Show’, ‘Joey Bishop Show’, ‘Julie Andrews Show.’ We were working 12 to 14 hours a day. We were so busy that we’d find subs to go to the rehearsals, then we’d go to the show and sight-read the music live in front of millions of people,” Hamilton says.

Over what turned out to be a 45-year career on the Los Angeles music scene, Hamilton played on many albums, film scores and TV shows. He worked on projects for Dick Cary, Ray Conniff, Jack Jones, Liberace, Hugo Montenegro and Frank Sinatra, among others, and was a regular in the Mike Barone Big Band. He also opened his own recording studio. In addition to writing and arranging, Dick plays about 20 instruments.

One of his fondest memories is a night he was playing with drummer Louie Bellson’s band at Donte’s, a venerable jazz club in North Hollywood from 1966 to 1988. “One table next to where I was sitting was empty, with a reserved sign. Near the end of the set, I heard lots of clapping. It was Ella Fitzgerald arriving with her friends. At the end of the night, I packed up and walked outside. Ella was standing there. She came over and said: ‘I just wanted to stick around long enough to tell you how much I enjoyed your playing,’” Hamilton recalls. “A moment like that’s enough to make an entire career.”

Distance did not diminish the Hamilton and Martin bond. They talked a lot by phone, and visited each other once or twice a year. At one point, Martin was able to take a lengthy sabbatical in Los Angeles that gave them more time to hang out and make music together.

Seeing how fertile the music scene was back in Southwest Florida while visiting the Martins, Hamilton and his wife, Jan, decided to move back to Sarasota from the West Coast two years ago. The trumpeter, now 77, and trombonist, now 76, keep busy working in collaborative groups and independently at area clubs and venues.

Their adventurous sound digs deep into Hamilton’s stellar arrangements, which often include instrumental counterpoint, a sound reminiscent of baritone saxophonist Gerry Mulligan’s collaborations with trumpeter Chet Baker and valve trombonist Bob Brookmeyer in the early 1950s.

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CENTENNIAL PARK, DOWNTOWN VENICE

Sunday, January 10, 2016 Skip’s Dixie Mix

Sunday, February 7, 2016 Ron Kraemer & The Hurricanes

Sunday, April 3, 2016 The Marc Mannino Band

Jazz Club of Sarasota’s 2016 Joy of Jazz concert series begins Sunday January 10, 2016, from 2-4 p.m., in Centennial Park in downtown Venice. The concerts are free but donations are accepted in support of the Jazz Club’s

scholarship fund. Guests are encouraged to bring lawn chairs and blankets. For more information, call 941-366-1552 or visit www.jazzclubsarasota.org. The series is co-sponsored by the Gulf Coast Community Foundation.

Free Joy of Jazz Concerts

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Michael Lazaroff Day

December 18, 2015 will be declared Michael Lazaroff Day by the Board of Directors of

The Jazz Club of Sarasota. Lazaroff is the Managing Director of The Jazz Cruise, which for the past five years has been the leading financial supporter of the Club. Presentation of the award will be at the concert on that day at the Riverview High School Performing Arts Center.

Almost 400 persons affiliated with the Club will have sailed on The Jazz Cruise, including the January 2016 cruise. The Jazz Cruise is the leading straight ahead jazz cruise and will celebrate its 16th annual cruise in January. Once again the 2016 cruise is sold out, but reservations for the 2017 cruise will soon be accepted by Golden Anchor Travel, which helps club members and friends with accommodations.

Over 80 world class jazz musicians appear on The Jazz Cruise each year with multiple concerts each day. Those who sail on the cruise have been known to declare that “it is jazz heaven.”

The Starlite Players

The Jazz Club of Sarasota is a proud sponsor of Starlite Players, the newest performing arts group in our area.

Founded by Jo Morello—producer, playwright and public relations consultant for the Jazz Club and others—Starlite Players presents a collection of short comedies for one weekend each month, on Thursday-Saturday at 7:30 p.m. and on Sunday at 2:00 p.m. and 6:30 p.m. The plays are presented in an informal, intimate bar setting upstairs in The Starlite Room (1001 Cocoanut Avenue), a vibrant restaurant and good friend of the Jazz Club.

Starlite Players produces plays by some of the finest talent in the Tampa Bay area (playwrights, directors, actors, tech crew and admin.). Critical and audience response have been enthusiastic since the company’s debut in July and the company proudly finished its first season in November with its 21st production. Now the troupe is selecting scripts for its next three sets of plays, scheduled for January 21-24, February 18-21 and March 17-20.

Tickets for these shows are now on sale at $17.50 and include a 15% discount for theatre patrons. To buy tickets visit www.starliteplayers.com or call 941.587.8290 (2 to 4 p.m.)

Special member benefit: The Starlite Room will grant a 10% discount to Jazz Club members with a membership card at any time.

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Happy 100th Birthday Svend Asmussen!

WE LOVE OUR VOLUNTEERS THANK YOU FOR ALL THAT YOU DO!

George & Janet Allgair

Denny& Maryanne Bloomer

Louise Brassard

Theresa Bulman

Edith & Marvin Catler

Mary Ann Cirigliano

Carolyn Curry

Rose & Vince Dickherber

Else Fierens

Carol Gilbert

Frank & Ellie Gooch

Ray Gramelspacher

Yvonne Griffen-Hall

Anthony & Sid Iannone

Edie Kaplan

Brad & Carol LoRicco

Dave & Liz Martin

Alvin Morris

Maralee Morrissey

Margi Nemeth

May Noll

Joyce Rosenthal

Eileen Seltzer

Sharon Semmer

Debbie Silver-Heller

Saretta Sparer

Lenore Walsh

Bob & Vern Weitz

Sarasota is the winter home of one of the greatest jazz violinists, Svend Asmussen and his wife,

Ellen Bick Asmussen. In addition to dozens of recordings, Svend has worked with many jazz greats including Benny Goodman, Lionel Hampton, Duke Ellington, Hoagy Carmichael and Dick Hyman. He is often referred to as “The Fiddling Viking.” In 2012, he received the Jazz Club of Sarasota’s prestigious Satchmo Award.

On February 28, 2015, Svend’s 99th birthday, a Storyville CD “Embraceable” was released worldwide. Svend says it is the best recording he has ever made and has never before been released.

On February 28, 2016, he will be 100 years old—perhaps making him the oldest living jazz great. While no longer performing in public, Svend and Ellen are still very active. This year her book of poetry “Inspiration Exspiration” has been published and Svend continues to write, compose and arrange music.

The Jazz Club Board joins with Jazz lovers everywhere to wish Svend a Happy 100th Birthday

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2015/2016 Membership ApplicationIt’s Your Way to Support Jazz in Sarasota

September 1, 2015 - August 31, 2016Individual Membership: $60 per person

In addition to supporting The Jazz Club of Sarasota, you will receive reduced admission to most of our events, a newsletter and weekly emails of jazz happenings in the area.

Membership Dues ($60 per person): $ ______________

In addition to membership, I would like to support young jazz musicians with a donation to the scholarship fund: $ ______________

TOTAL amount enclosed: $ ______________

Name(s) _____________________________________________________________________

Street Address ________________________________________________________________

City _____________________________State ___________Zip _________________________

Phone ___________________________Email* ______________________________________ *For updates concerning concerts and club news (for use only by The Jazz Club of Sarasota)

I would like to volunteer for o Membership o Jazz at Two The Jazz Club of Sarasota o Jazz Festival o Office Help or Outdoor Concerts

Please list any special expertise (i.e. tech, speaking, etc.)

_____________________________________________________________________________

The Jazz Club of Sarasota, official registration SC-03656, meets all requirements specified by the Florida Solicitation of Contributions Act. The Jazz Club of Sarasota does not contract professional solicitors and 100% of funds received go directly to programs of the organization.

A copy of the official registration and financial information may be obtained from the Division of Consumer Services by calling toll-free, (800-435-7351), within the State. Registration does not imply endorsement, approval, or recommendation by the State.

Please remit check to: The Jazz Club of Sarasota330 S. Pineapple Avenue #111Sarasota, FL 34236

OR Pay online at: www.jazzclubsarasota.com

Thank you for your support of The Jazz Club of Sarasota!