Bob Seymour knows a thing or two about Tampa Bay jazz. He probably knows about a million things about it, actually. For 35 years he was jazz director at WUSF 89.7-FM, where he not only introduced some of jazz’s biggest names to listeners, but cultivated a love and appreciation for local players.
“He’s the most important figure on the local jazz scene for the last three-and-half decades,” former CL music editor and critic Eric Snider said in a 2016 story about Seymour’s retirement. “I don’t think it’s close.”
It’s safe to say that Seymour, 69, taught Tampa Bay a lot about jazz during his time at the board, but he hasn’t stopped there. As president of the 13-year-old, nonprofit Tampa Jazz Club, Seymour still helps book concerts at venues like the Mainstage Theatre at HCC Ybor City and the University of South Florida’s School of Music Concert Hall (not to mention past shows at Springs Theatre in Sulphur Spring and the since-closed Gorilla Theatre in Drew Park). Since 2003, Tampa Jazz Club members have also awarded graduating Bay area high school seniors more than $22,000 in scholarship money. Like other local jazz scene legends, Seymour is quick to deflect accolades toward another program benefiting young Bay area jazz musicians.
“One thing happening, kind of under the radar is the work that Clearwater Jazz Holiday is doing as part of its outreach program,” Seymour told CL. He lauded the way the organization gets jazz in front of kids in fun and entertaining ways, and he’s certain that the programming has not only affected young musicians, but kids who end up doing something outside of music for a living.
“They’ll be the hip audience of the future because just being exposed to live music and the history of it goes a long way,” Seymour added. “The Clearwater Jazz Holiday is doing so much more than people realize.”
“That’s our flagship program — the History of Jazz Education Outreach Program,” Steve Weinberger told CL. He’s Clearwater Jazz Holiday’s CEO and can effortlessly outline the way the program reaches and teaches kids of all learning levels and economic situations. The organization even showcases the program, under the “Giants Of Jazz” banner, to the general public once a year and has plans to expand it to senior living centers so that dementia patients can experience the power of jazz.
“As our educator is telling the story to the audience, young musicians that we support in other programs take on the persona personas of the legends that we’re describing,” Weinberger said, adding that the Jazz Holiday has reached over 26,000 students in eight years.
“We may be talking about New Orleans and early jazz, and a 15-year-old trumpet player from a local high school will come on and will be soloing with the band, playing the part of Louis Armstrong.”
Another big program partially funded by the 40-year-old Clearwater Jazz Holiday is the Young Lions Jazz Master Sessions, a formerly once-a-year, one-of-a-kind instructional experience that connects Bay area jazz students with university jazz educators and jazz professionals at no cost to invited participants. The program has expanded to local schools where professional musicians work with band directors to help students achieve their musical goals, whether they’re workshopping around improvisation or preparing for an upcoming competition.
Not too bad for a festival that launched on the back of a flatbed truck on the way to booking big names like Woody Herman, Dizzy Gillespie, Herbie Mann and Dave Brubeck, all while continuing to adapt to a changing audience and the demands of a modern music festival landscape that’s seen many festivals — including the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival — have to incorporate non-jazz acts into its lineup.
But Clearwater Jazz Holiday isn’t alone in its mission to bring jazz into schools. A partner to the expansion of the Young Lions program is the Al Downing Tampa Bay Jazz Association, which has been providing opportunity for jazz enthusiasts since the ‘80s when its late, St. Petersburg-based namesake and founder merged his philanthropic group with one founded by Tampa saxophonist and humanitarian Ernie Calhoun. Like the Tampa Jazz Club and Clearwater Jazz Holiday, the Al Downing Tampa Bay Jazz Association puts on concerts, but it also uses membership and private donations to help students and the public understand and appreciate jazz.
J.J. Pattishall, an Orlando native who studied at Rollins College under bassist Chuck Archard and guitarist Bobby Koelble, is the newly-appointed president of the Al Downing Tampa Bay Jazz Association.
Pattishall, 37, found his way to the Al Downing Tampa Bay Jazz Association after a search for some way to combine his love for music with a need to get plugged into an organization that was giving back. He spent time watching Dwayne White, who runs the Al Downing Monday-night jazz jam at The Hangar in St. Petersburg, teaching kids about the history of jazz in the classroom. He was inspired by the work that White, who also heads Education and Outreach for the Al Downing Tampa Bay Jazz Association, was doing and made his way to some board meetings. Longtime Al Downing member and Vice President Bette Gregg nudged him into his new role, which he’s been in since October.
There’s been a lot of on the job training, according to Pattishall, but he’s interested in figuring out how to respect the organization’s past with its need to grow membership so that the Al Downing Tampa Bay Jazz Association can continue its mission.
“There’s an older generation that’s been our bread and butter, and it’s supported us up to this point,” Pattishall said. “But if we don’t start finding ways to reach an audience that’s generationally and culturally diverse then I don’t see it as sustainable.”
There seems to be a lot of hope for Pattishall, however, and he credits instructors in high schools who’ve created programs where “the bands are way better than what was even coming out of the colleges I went to.”
In Tampa, one of those places cultivating young jazz musicians that may one day advance Al Downing’s mission is the David A. Straz Center’s Patel Conservatory, where a five-day jazz intensive taught by saxophonist Matthew Weimuller runs students through master classes, ear-training and improvising for combo and big band playing.
And if you wander the offices at the Straz Center, you’ll run into the smiling face of another longtime Tampa Bay jazz lifer, Fred Johnson. The 70-year-old vocalist was the first artist to play at The Straz when it opened as Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center in 1987. That gig happened 10 years after Johnson arrived in the area thinking he was going to do a two-week gig with his friend and late pianist Little John Ferrara at the landmark Hurricane Lounge in Pass-A-Grille.
“I went back to Boston after that and gave work my notice — and, yes, it might have had something to do with the fact that it was 21 degrees up there” Johnson told CL about his decision to move here and be part of a scene that included bassist John Lamb and Al Downing. He did a brief stint in Detroit, where he met his wife, who was born and raised in Tampa. They came home, and Johnson was pleased to find that a new bumper crop of jazz musicians had popped up in the few short years he was gone.
These days, Johnson is an artist-in-residence at Straz Center and heavily involved in the nonprofit’s community engagement. In the last year, a program Johnson helped develop, Straz Jazz, worked with band directors at high schools in Pinellas, Hillsborough and Pasco counties to put together an 85-member high school jazz orchestra playing familiar music from artists like Duke Ellington as well as an original piece of music.
“It was so awesome to watch that happen. I do believe that the future expansion of jazz in Tampa Bay, and for hearing more jazz, is to continue with an education process… a conversation about jazz,” Johnson said. After the show, kids in attendance walked up to him and said that the performance inspired them to pick up some drum sticks. Those students, he said, must be aware of the fact that old heads like himself, bassist Michael Ross and others are around to talk to them about their own experiences making a living playing music and how they themselves stood on the shoulders of giants.
“This experience of improvisational music, which was a real anchor and a part of Tampa Bay back in the ‘70s, can be done again,” Johnson said, alluding to those days when he and a crop of jazz musicians like Lamb, Downing, Belinda Womack and others would make the rounds at clubs in Tierra Verde and greater St. Petersburg.
“We have to encourage pub owners and folks to believe and to have these new conversations,” Johnson added. “There are some great programs in the schools, but they also need to know that beyond that, there are places and institutions like the Straz that are working to expand on that and create greater opportunities for these young people to understand that jazz is still alive.”
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