Lou Delmonico, one of the original founders of Southern California’s Orange County Performing Arts Center, celebrated his seventy-fifth birthday recently.
Lou sits on many arts-related boards; his love of opera and chorale music is legendary.
He’s also a great fan of classic jazz, the kind you can dance to.
Standards. Big band. He loves it all.
I was honored to have been part of the spectacular celebration Lou put on for his many friends and associates.
Lou flew me out from Dallas, with instructions to assemble the wonderful musicians I work with in California.
It was quite a band: Bill Cunliffe, Terry Harrington, Steve Wilkerson, Dean Koba, Kye Palmer, Ben May, Tony Campodinico, Barry Zweig.
Can you spell “G-R-A-M-M-Y?”
These folks have played on many Grammy award-winning albums, and have a few statues of their own.
It’s always great fun to work for Lou. He knows what he wants, which makes entertaining his guests a delight.
And, of course, I know a lot of the folks in his crowd. It was good to see them, too.
I think I sang for five hours.
And guys…there is never enough time.
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It’s been more than six years since we moved halfway across the country to our home in Dallas, TX.
In the thirty years we lived in California, a lot of things changed there — some for the better, and some not.
Texas is a far different place, and even more different from the locales of my childhood, New York City and Coastal Connecticut.
In all of these places, though, one can certainly become enveloped in a strong sense of community.
And never more so than here, today.
One night not long after we arrived in Texas, I went out with a friend for dinner.
Sitting at the bar, we were befriended by four people – two seated on either side of us.
From, of all places, California.
I mean, they were from exactly MY California — where I had lived and worked all those years.
They had just moved here.
When we “friended” each other on Facebook, we knew some people in common.
And not just ANY people, either.
I won’t name names, but they would be quite recognizable to almost anyone who watches TV, eats in restaurants or was a close friend of Frank Sinatra’s.
This sort of thing happens often to me in Texas. Before I changed my California vanity… Read the full story »
Reflecting upon the state of jazz in the state of Texas, it’s alive and well.
A recent club date was big-time proof that the art of improvisation lives in the hearts, minds bodies and talents of some very fine young musicians here.
Was I dreaming, or did the magnificent sax player in my band have the breathy, full-bodied tone of Lester Young?
And the drummer, a master of brushwork – did I conjure him up from some sort of long-lost yearning? No, it was real, alright.
And there’s an audience for it, too.
A quiet, listening audience.
The audience listens to us, and we listen to each other.
All of it’s an art form – a skillful interaction of live, in-the-moment musical conversation that’s withstood the test of time to emerge better than ever.
This is how we keep the music playing, with the love and support of a community that understands culture.
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