But it goes way beyond that. Bob’s love of improvisational jazz has infected the community. A bunch of the music dads (kind of like soccer moms, only different) started hanging around on Wednesday mornings to help out when Bob had to go to teacher meetings. This led to the creation of a band called the Jazz Dads. Now they play at the local concerts as well.
The local retirement community has always had its share of skilled musicians and they got up a jazz big band a few years ago. Some of the young musicians sit in with them, and it’s not unusual for a Rossmoor Big Band concert to feature musicians ages 13 to 83 and sometimes older.
In some ways, the center piece of the local jazz scene is the high school jazz ensemble. These are 17 of the finest musicians around, many children of professionals, and they are simply outstanding.
A couple of years ago, some of us got together to put together a summer jazz camp. Someone
pointed out that Mr. Athayde spent most of his summer trudging from music camp to music camp teaching for peanuts . . . and we in the community were sending our kids to these same camps. Something about that just didn’t make sense. Why not just create a camp here in town? So we did. Today it is one of the hot jazz camps, staffed with professional musicians, many of whom are also recording artists. It’s a big thrill for the kids and something the musicians look forward to doing.
That led to the creation of a foundation called Generations in Jazz that sponsors our local Lafayette Jazz festival featuring all the bands mentioned above. We also record a CD every year. There’s more but you get the idea. There is a lot of jazz played in our little town, and lots of people involved in making it happen.
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