SOME COOL CATS

PALMER — From bright and early Saturday morning until the late evening, the halls of Palmer High School were filled with music.

Choirs in the auditorium. Drummers in the gym. Saxophone players in the band room. Jam sessions upstairs. The players came from all the big Valley junior and senior high schools. And though for most of the day it resembled nothing so much as bedlam, the organizers said that wasn’t necessarily the case.

“It looks like total chaos but everybody’s getting where they need to go,” said Palmer high music teacher Stan Harris.

Harris has been putting on the yearly jazz fest for six years.

He said there’s a big three-day festival in Fairbanks at the end of the year. But there’s a lot of pressure there.

“I kind of felt like it would be nice to get the kids out and playing and hearing each other at the beginning of the year, in a low-key environment,” Harris said.

The afternoon and evening leads up to the concerts, which start at 6 p.m. and wrap up with the U.S. Air Force Band of the Pacific’s Greatlanders performing at 9 p.m.

Everyone goes home exhausted and, “usually we’re done in time to go to church in the morning,” Harris said.

He spent the early afternoon playing piano to accompany his school’s jazz choir. After a three-song performance, Anchorage jazz musician Melissa Bledsoe Fischer critiqued them.

“I have to find little things to nit-pick because you guys are so good,” she told the choir.

Over in the band room, Staff Sgt. Jeff Hall and Tech. Sgt. Michael Van Arsdale went over basic technique with the saxophone players, starting with how to properly wrap one’s lips around the mouthpiece.

A quick litmus test, Van Arsdale said — if your mouth is on the alto saxophone right, you can play an A with just the mouthpiece.

In the gymnasium, Staff Sgt. Michael Henrie told the assembled drummers that comfort is key in setting up a drum kit. He also said the ride cymbal and hi-hat were the two most important instruments in jazz drumming. He recounted a gig in which he’d gotten to the show only to find he had no bass drum.

“It still sounded like jazz,” he said.

Jamin Burton, who teaches music at Colony High School, said it’s nice having the Air Force guys around for this kind of event.

“They spend a lot of time teaching them how to teach,” he said of the band’s training.

Harris said they also work cheap.

“It’s in their charter that they’re not allowed to accept any money,” he said.

Which is good because there’s not a lot of money to go around.

Harris said that all the bands kick in a little, which covers the cost of some of the presenters and provides food for everyone. And it all works out.

“It pays for itself,” Harris said. “What we didn’t want to do was have to charge admission.”

Contact Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.