Last updated on 9/4/2026
Another click in the wheel of parenthood rolled by the other night. I’m talking again about the musical lives of my children and their friends. Their performance environment has somehow evolved from the first few for-parents-ears-only concert efforts to a stage where it is possible to sit and truly enjoy a whole evening of music-making.
The band director at our local high school put together his first-ever jazz invitational. He called up 6 or 7 other area high school bands, but the big bait on the hook was the Kent State Jazz ensemble, which has recently won national awards. My kids actually wanted to go and hear this because they are both in band already and this energetic director has both of them interested in trying out for the jazz band.
I already knew that our own band could move it. They have a surprisingly polished sound at an age when most of their peer group hasn’t heard of the Beatles, let alone Basie or Bird. No stand-out soloists, but they got the swing thing cold. And you had to figure that the Kent band would be big time wild sounds.
What I was more interested in is something that always happens when you get a group of young and real enthusiastic players together. I’ve seen it so many times during CCC’s annual Jazz Fest activities when they have high school and college bands playing all over town at random public places. I’ve seen it unexpectedly at a few school concerts. And I get to see it again this evening. What happens is, some shy kid with a letter jacket and a buzz cut gets pumped from all the energy floatin’ around the room. They stand up and play so far over their head that they even shock themselves.
Who is the Band to Beat?
The first few bands started us hoppin’ right away. They picked heavy favorites from the big band and blues charts, with a few show tunes mixed in. The rhythm sections tend to be a lot more solid than the horns at this age, so the solos were short but frequent. Kids were jumping up all over the bandstand and taking their rips. It reminded me of a big old family feud where nobody can wait for their turn to speak. “Oh yeah?” “Well, oh yeah? Hear this!”
“Way to go, boppers,” I’m thinking to myself. “But no one knocks me out yet. WHO is the band to beat?” Although it wasn’t a ‘Battle of the Bands’ thing with awards, people were still shouting for their school and their favorites. This is one of the parts of the whole jazz scene I like best. If what you hear makes you smile, you just let the players know right out loud. There’s always fans clapping and yelling somewhere. No need to wait politely and impatiently until THE VERY END like at the orchestra.
Anyways, as if to answer my question, the next band comes on and does two more contemporary numbers that’re pretty difficult. Then they get right in our face. They change speeds with a ballad, a pretty song by Pat Metheny called If I Could. And he can’t be 17 from the looks of him, but this modern jazz youth stands up there all alone and plays the whole piece right out of his head.
What is Happening Here?
The leader pushes the band way down quiet behind and the kid is soaring somewhere in a sweet jazz blue sky all by himself. He works through the changes like he wrote the song and tries out a few of his own ideas while he’s at it. There’s a brief stunned silence as the last notes die away. Did you ever doubt your own eyes and ears for a minute? No one seems to be quite sure if they really just heard… an angel playing a saxophone ? Or what? Then the crowd jumps up and pays this new-born talent his noisy dues.
The rest of the night is still very enjoyable, don’t get me wrong. Two more high school bands come on and we get back on the blues train. I figure anyone who can get this kind of music out of constitutionally rebellious high school players has to be doing God’s work. I also love to see how new students of the music appropriate the symbols of jazz and make them their own. Loud ties, cool black outfits, weird shades, even goatees and stick-up coffee-house poet hairdos – we get to see them all.
The Kent State band is on fire after waiting so long, takes no prisoners, shows off some brand new music that some folks can’t handle. Their leader makes a point of talking to, explaining, and encouraging the high school musicians who’ve stayed to hear. We expect them to walk out there on the edge, and they do.
Reflections on Perfection
But I can’t stop thinking about that horn player! It doesn’t seem right to call him a kid anymore, he’s shown himself to be a man of music. I’ve paid money to hear people who couldn’t play with half the feeling he had.
I reflect on the difficulty most of us have just getting through daily life. We try not to move our lips when we read and forget the grocery list if there are more than three things on it. Every once in a while, though, some alien example of perfection comes to earth right in front of us and if we’re smart, we use it to try and move ourselves a little closer to some personal ideal.
The wunderkind poses me one more of the endless decisions of parenthood: whether to use an example like this to hammer home a lesson on the value of work and study, or just to let events speak for themselves. I opt for restraint this time, since the kids seemed to dig it as much as I did. It’d be nice to be able to stage little events like this so they’d be full of great ideals and examples, but guess what, people…. you can’t do it. You just gotta be lucky enough to recognize it when it happens.
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