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Jazz Times December 2002 |
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Ever since I started writing
about jazz, I’ve heard the recurring—and
baseless— obbligato that jazz will soon be on
life support. However,
— there is always the need to nurture new
audiences, and players. Accordingly, the most
exemplary project of jazz at Lincoln Center is
the Essentially Ellington High School Jazz Band
Competition, now in its seventh year and newly
extended to Australia with Essentially Ellington
Down Under. Wynton Marsalis should take note
that among these student instrumentalists
challenged by Duke’s scores there are many very
proficient young women. Maybe Wynton will
eventually offer one of them a chair in his male
ensemble.
But with regard to the future of jazz, there is
one solo educator—without any of the
organizational and financial resources of Jazz
at Lincoln Center—who deserves much more
attention, and emulation. Sonny LaRosa, formerly
a trumpet player with Sam Donahue, among others,
is the director, arranger and nurturer of
America’s Youngest jazz Band. It’s a big band
and the players are from six to 12 years
old. The band has existed for 23 years,
but I first heard them last year at a four-day,
annual March of jazz party in Clearwater Beach,
Fla., celebrating the 74th birthday of
stubbornly youthful Ruby Brafi.
The kids hit at nine in the morning, before some
of the late-night revelers were ready for more.
And as I also thought, “How much can kids say on
their horns? Or swing?” But I was curious. As I
later wrote in The Wall Street Journal, I
was jolted by the band’s impact in its opener,
“Bugle Call Rag.” This was jubilant,
foot-tapping swinging. As the set went on, I
noted, “They not only knew how to swing
collectively, but the soloists could tell a
story. A story limited by their brief experience
in music and life but nonetheless theirs. ”me what
ruefully, “Now the younger ones coming into the
band can play anything.”
So will Sonny LaRosa’s alumni. As the March 1999
Mississippi Rag reported: “It takes about two
years of lessons to break in a new band member.
Some who stay in the band until retirement at
age 13 often beg to stay ‘just one more year.’
The 12-year-old limit is imposed to keep the
band as young as possible.”
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America’s Youngest jazz Band has joyously
surprised other listeners at the Montreux jazz
Festival in Switzerland, various American
festivals and was probably the youngest band to
perform at Preservation Hall in New Orleans
during the New Orleans jazz and Heritage
Festival. For reasons I cannot understand, it
has yet to be invited to play, of all places, at
the annual assembly of International Association
for Jazz Education, nor has George Wein ever
invited the band to play at any of his
festivals.
Writing the liner notes for the band’s newest
CD, Live at March of Jazz 2002, I quoted from
St. Petersburg Times reporter Lane DeGregory’s
explanation of how Sonny LaRosa brings along
his lively jazz apprentices: “Sonny arranges all
the songs himself. He writes each part out by
hand, for every instrument, individualizing the
approach to each musician’s ability (or lack
thereof). He draws the notes in black marker.
The fingerings beneath, in red. And he pencils
the chord names in on top. He knows which kids
can hold a long low C and who can hit a high F.
He knows whose arms have grown enough to extend
a trombone slide and who still needs help
counting.”
I remember, years ago, Duke Ellington telling me
why the scores in his orchestra were not headed
“first trumpet,” “second trombone,” etc. Instead
they usually had the names of each player. “I
know the strengths and weaknesses of these
musicians,” Duke said, “and I write with that
information in mind.” But later, he told me, so
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Sonny is a vigorous 76, and I think these kids
keep him that way. David Liebman, a player of
first-class musicianship, says: “Sonny LaRosa
should be given the Medal of Freedom. Not only
has he taught them each on their own
instruments, but he has molded them into a truly
remarkable unit. When you see the pride that is
reflected in these youngsters’ faces and the way
they stand tall to strut their stuff—this gives
you hope for the future of culture and the arts
in this country.” And, of course, the future of
jazz.
I write this in the hope that other veterans of
big bands will devote themselves to this
fruitful way to keep the music alive. I can
still see and hear these kids swinging into “One
O'clock Jump”—in their red jackets, black pants,
white shirts and bow ties, flourishing their
instruments from side to side like the bands of
my youth in the stage shows between movies.
These youngsters are not playing at jazz, they
herald the jazz to come. For information about
the band’s CDs and how to book the band, Sonny
LaRosa is at 1129 Pelican Place, Safety Harbor,
FL 34693. Phone: 727-723- 1788;
www.sonnylarosa.com; e-mail:
sonnyasonnylarosa.com.
When I was a 14-year-old clarinetist, Ruby Braff,
a year younger, invited me to a session at his
home. As soon he began to play, I gave up
fantasizing I’d ever be on the road with
anybody. But maybe, if a Sonny LaRosa had been
there....
Nat Hentoff can be contacted at
212-366-9181.
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Jazz has given me many unexpected
startling pleasures. Years ago, at Basin Street East in
New York, Sonny Stitt suddenly broke into a stop-time
chorus, without the rhythm section, and all conversation
stopped. It was as if time itself had stopped, but was
still swinging.
Five years ago, at Arbors Records’ March of Jazz in
Clearwater, Fla.—a tribute to Ruby Braff on his 74th
birthday—Sonny LaRosas ‘America’s Youngest Jazz Band,
featuring Musicians Ages 6 to 12” was scheduled first on
one of the mornings. Remembering
what Charlie Parker famously said, “Music is
your own experience. . . If you don’t live it,
it won’t come out of your horn,” I wondered how
much these kids could have experienced.
I’d listen to a couple of numbers, I thought,
and then take a walk on the beach. But the band
hit with a “Bugle Call Rag” that almost knocked
me out of my seat. I stayed for the whole
swinging set, which included real lyricism in
the ballads. Only a very young girl trying to
sing of romantic love broke the spell until the
return of the instrumentals. I’ve been following
the odyssey of this band ever since. It won a
gold medal at an international jazz festival in
New Orleans, was convincing at the Montreux Jazz
Festival in Switzerland, and was the youngest
band to have ever played at Preservation Hall in
New Orleans, where it fit right into the
jubilation.
During this year’s Labor Day weekend, -
the world’s youngest road band worked the Sweet
& Hot Musical Festival at Los Angeles Airport’s
Marriott Hotel. In the audience was Rosemary
Soladar, the longtime
companion of one of the most joyous of a
jazzmen, the late trombonist Al Grey. (I’m when
eagerly looking forward to her book about him.
He is—not only just was—in the jazz pantheon.)
“The band,” she told me, “had one of the few
standing ovations for these merely astonishing
youngsters, led by the 80-year- old Sonny
LaRosa—now in his 28th year as the
arranger-conductor- mentor, and a model to these
kids of how meaningful an educator can be to
their lives.”
As Jalon King, an alumnus of the band, wrote
Sonny three years ago: “You have taught me the
heart of passion and communicating through my
music. . .You are a true tower of inspiration to
anything in my life that I do.” Sonny, who
played trumpet with the underrated band of Sam
Donahue, among others—and for years after,
taught trumpet, piano and guitar in New York,
moved to Florida in 1978, still teaching, and
then started the nucleus of a band “with five or
six kids who could play with good conceptions.”
Duke Ellington once told me how he wrote
individually for his musicians because, he said,
“I know their strengths—and their weaknesses.”
In the Nov. 7, 2000 issue of “The Floridian,” a
section of the St. Petersburg Times, Lane
DeGregory described the LaRosa method: “Most
kids who come to him have never heard jazz. . .
Sonny shows them videos of Buddy Rich, Louis
Prima, Billie Holiday.. .He arranges all the
songs himself. He writes out each part by hand,
for every instrument, individualizing the
approach to fit each musician’s ability (or lack
thereof). He draws the notes in black marker.
The fingertips beneath in
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red. And he pencils the chord names in on
top. He knows which kids can hold a long low C
and who can hit a high F. He knows whose arms
have grown long enough to extend a trombone
slide and who still needs help counting.”
Listening to the band at its various gigs, jazz
musicians of renown have told Sonny, “Boy, I
wish I had that when I was a kid!” As a flailed
musician able to read any piece of music but
unable to speak jazz on my clarinet, I sure wish
there had been a Sonny LaRosa when I was a kid.
Maybe I could have eventually fulfilled my dream
of subbing for Barney Bigard in the Ellington
Orchestra.
Sonny is so eager to have his youngsters be
heard that he’ll split the expenses—and
sometimes raise enough to pay them all—to
fulfill a gig. It is utterly inexplicable to me
that America’s Youngest Jazz Band has never been
invited to play at George Wein’s JVC Jazz
Festival in New York, at the annual
International Association for Jazz Education
events, or even in their home area at the
Clearwater Jazz Holiday. But for IAJE especially
to overlook this band is what I call educational
malpractice.
In Sonny’s current band of 20 musicians, the age
range begins at 7 years and there are two
14-year_old players (“to inspire the other
kids,” Sonny says). But that’s the cut-off age.
There are always openings in the band, and
parents in the Tampa Bay area are invited to
come hear the band with their kids who have
shown an interest in music. Sonny LaRosa’s
contact information: 1129 Pelican Place, Safety
Harbor, FL 34695; phone 727-725-1788;
www.sonnylarosa.com; e-mail: Sonny€’
sonnylarosa.com. At those addresses, you can get
the band’s most recent CD—Sonny L.aRosa &
America’s Youngest Jazz Band 2006: Sonnyl 80th
Birthday Edition, 28th Anniversary CD (Keeping
Swing and Big BandJazzAlive9.
Sonny sometimes thinks of retiring, but as he
told Lane DeGregory “I never had the natural
talent. I didn’t have great ears. I wasn’t a
great improviser. God doesn’t make everybody
great. But the reward, for all my playing and
praying, it’s coming now.” I’ve heard Sonny play
his horn. He tells a story his own story. Like
every jazz player who’s made it. And he’s also
made it as a teacher with big ears.
Nat Hentoff can be contacted at 212-366-9181
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