The heart of Cleveland Jazz

These are Steve and Terri, two of the local Peter Pan musicians in Cleveland. Terri, who plays violin, you'll remember from an earlier post --- she ran the Cleveland Jazz Festival for many years and just recently got asked to run the Detroit Jazz Festival. Steve plays trumpet and teaches at Tri-C College, which is a pretty ordinary community college except for the jazz program. It was the original home for the Cleveland Jazz Festival 25 years ago --- the festival was pretty humble at first but now hosts the biggest names and has a $1 million endowment.

Steve was telling about some of his Tri-C students who have had successful careers. One, a trumpet player I believe named Dominic, was playing along with Louis Armstrong records at the age of 11. At age fifteen, they took him to Wynton Marsalis, who was playing at the Cleveland festival. After hearing the kid play, Marsalis said, "You are going to be famous." Dominic got a full scholarship to Julliard, and at the age of 20 has a recording contract.