ADAMCZYK: Father Terry and his friends

By Ed Adamczyk
The Tonawanda News

June 19, 2008 11:56 pm

— On a sunny and humid Saturday evening, you really do not expect to glide down any street in Kenmore and be surprised by anything more eventful than an errant tossed ball. So there you are, sailing down leafy Delaware Road, and in a small parking lot tucked between a Tudor-style church and the “classical monumental” W.P.A. architecture of the Municipal Building, you see a 14-piece jazz orchestra setting up. Neighbors are out on their porches, patrons are in folding chairs on the church lawn, and saxophonists and trumpeters are casually walking down the sidewalk. Music stands and extension cords cover the parking lot. A huge drum set is unloaded and installed.
With characteristic nonchalance (and why the terms “jazz” and “well-organized” are seldom seen in the same sentence), the musicians finally pull it together, twenty minutes late. The George Scott Big Band, a respected mainstay in local music circles, blasts into a rousing Forties-era classic, and we’re off. This is going to be one heck of a church barbeque.
This is also how Kenmore’s Church of the Advent does things. Any group can fry chicken and pour beer in support of a cause, but Father Terry Bull, pastor of the Episcopal church at Delaware Road and Argonne Drive, relies on his friends in the jazz community for the day’s entertainment. That’s him in the second row, on the trombone.
The band rolls through the classics of the genre, “Ain’t Misbehavin’”, “Bluesing With Bradley”, “Perdido”, as passersby stop to listen, and little kids, who’ve presumably never heard a jazz band, dance on the sidewalk. A steady stream of customers exits the basement of the church and onto the lawn, balancing paper plates of fat little chickens and cans of soda and beer (Episcopalians drink Michelob and Blue Light). By the time this is over, some 200 people will be relaxing on the narrow church greensward.
The band is tight and the audience is receptive. Scott, the bandleader, is a genial presence, and a member of the Colored Musicians Club, an organization headquartered in downtown Buffalo that has defiantly kept its non-politically-correct name as an homage to the days it was a hiring hall in a segregated business. This band is black and white, young and old, male and female, and so is the audience.
The drinks flow. The breeze feels welcome. More chairs, more chicken, more music. Each member of the band tears through a solo to wild applause. Neighbors leave their lawnmowers, and traffic pulls over, to listen. Jennifer May, a slender redhead with the electric bass and an amplifier the size of a small washing machine, takes a turn --- when she is not busy being one of Buffalo’s premier jazz musicians, she’s the office administrator at the Church of the Advent.
After every song, the audience explodes with cheering, and the soloists are identified, to more cheering. Among them are Lou Kaminski on trumpet and flugelhorn, from Tonawanda, and Jim Boldan on baritone saxophone, “from right up the street” in Kenmore. Vocalist Melissa Kate grew up in Kenmore, and offers the Duke Ellington evergreen “Do Nothing Until You Hear From Me”, as well as “Blue Skies” and in a sweet soprano. This is turning into a memorable night.
For the obligatory audience participation tune, Maestro Scott invites the crowd to put down its chickens and start some finger-snapping. Once we’re all in time, the band accompanies us in the familiar “Pink Panther Theme”, perhaps the one song in the set everyone recognizes. Then Melissa comes back, with a stunning “For Once in My Life” that leaves the crowd breathless.
Let’s review. This was free and on the lawn, with food available. These were Buffalo’s best musicians; many run bands of their own, so the Reverend Bull presented Kenmore an all-star orchestra. It had the vibe of a unity event for the village, but without the philosophical or political baggage, and if you weren’t a parishioner, it felt like a Sixties-style spontaneous performance. It took place steps away from the Delaware Road sidewalk, so an attendee could go home and say “I was walking down the street and ran into a jazz concert.” And people think there’s nothing going on in Kenmore.
Ed Adamczyk is a Kenmore resident whose column appears Fridays in the Tonawanda News. Contact him at EdinKenmore@gmail.com.

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