Dereke Clements had to leave the jam-packed bar just for a moment. He was 19, and he was just about to solo with legends of jazz. In an alley just off Champaign's Cowboy Monkey, he put his sax to his lips and calmed himself with a few bars of Charlie Parker.

The local nightclub event in September was a jam session to kick off Jazz Threads, Krannert Center for the Performing Arts' yearlong dialogue via melody with the community — not least the black community, where a half-century ago Pete Bridgewater was playing at the AMVETS club, and his nephews were across the street, soaking it in through a bedroom window.

The Illini Jazz Band plays for Cecil Bridgewater (not pictured) as he begins a workshop with them on campus in December 2003.

And tonight at the Cowboy Monkey, the accomplished jazz trumpeter Cecil Bridgewater '69, who would come to be the keystone of the dialogue initiated by the University of Illinois art center, was on the stage, along with his brother Ron, a University professor. Clements, a UI employee, came off as scared as he launched into a solo on Parker's "Yardbird Suite" but gained confidence after a few bars. Like Cecil says, Clements was composing — in its improvisational core, jazz is a musical form that requires the player to create his own tune.

The energy was building, in the heat radiating off a crowd swaying to the beat, in the frequencies put out by master musicians. The energy would build for an entire academic year, one moment after another.

It's a momentum of musical awareness that Krannert has nurtured yearlong to seep the sound of jazz into the community. Since August, Jazz Threads has brought this singularly American art form to the people — via concerts, lectures, mentoring and jam sessions, using everything from jazz legends to talented teens, lunchtime conversations to jazz at the public library — to jump-start jazz awareness in the area. The program, which entertained fans and novices with more than 60 events at clubs, schools, businesses and concert halls, ended May 2 at a fourth concert by Cecil Bridgewater and friends at Champaign's Virginia Theatre.

Tammey Kikta, Krannert's public information director, believes Jazz Threads has been "a very, very positive experience." She said audiences young and old have gained a sense of Champaign-Urbana's place in jazz history, as well as of the types of jazz present in the community. For some, Jazz Threads has taken them back to memories of smoky bars and solo trumpets crooning through the night. For others, each thread is a beginning, a first-timer's experience with the music that reinvents itself each time it's played. "There was definitely a sense of discovery," Kikta said.

Cecil Bridgewater joins the University of Illinois Concert Jazz Band at a concert held in March at the Krannert Center.

Moments, little solo moments, of the jazzed-up year:

• Cecil Bridgewater and his ex-wife, the Grammy-winning Dee Dee Bridgewater, sparring on stage Dec. 6 in a practiced oneupsmanship, he on trumpet, she on that vocal instrument often compared to Ella Fitzgerald's. "Anything you can do, I can do better," is how Kitka viewed that interchange. Remarked Cecil, "That's probably the most fun I've had on stage ever."
• Local musician Jeff Helgesen, watching Zorba's restaurant fill up, speeding through Wayne Shorter numbers, determined to crank up the March 4 Jazz Crawl. "The way you talk and the way that you think is the way that you play," Cecil said. "There's no separation." That symphonic conversation between the audience and the musicians is why jazz is best live, he said. "We have the opportunity and the responsibility to make it different every night."
• Jazz legend Clark Terry, after a virtuoso concert in March on trumpet and flugelhorn. There's a second show, an Afterglow, at Krannert, and the aging horn player is missing in action. Then, bouncing off a brick wall as if through an amplifier, his trumpet sounds, instantly recognizable, as you look up to see him in his wheelchair, sitting in the audience but obviously leading the band.
• Schoolchildren, yawning, then looking up delighted to hear the theme song from "The Flintstones" at an "Arts for Kids" program at Krannert in September. "It has the same chord structure as 'I Got Rhythm,'" said Cecil, who also trots out some Louis Armstrong numbers and listens to pupils' questions. "There's a lot you can do with it."

Top photo: Chris Brown Photography/KCPA.

Bottom photo by Jason Lindsey, courtesy of the Krannert Center for the Performing Arts.