Mike Ross, director of the Krannert Center, first spun the idea of Jazz Threads into life.
"It goes back a couple of years," he said of the program's conception. "When I first arrived at Krannert six years ago, I was certain there was a need for Krannert to be more aggressive in support of jazz as an art form.
"By virtue of lots of different conversations, we began to get a picture of the history of jazz in this community. There's really quite a history, and the name of Cecil Bridgewater kept coming up. More than anything else, the convergence of different themes in the community at large and at the University showed what a strength there has been here," he said.
Cecil saw Jazz Threads as an opportunity to encourage the growth of new roots in a place where his own roots run deep. "It was a lot of work," he said of his yearlong commitment to the program. "It was tiring in one way, but it was exhilarating."
LaMonte Parsons Experience wows the crowd at the Cowboy Monkey in Champaign at a Jazz Crawl through the area in March.
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For Krannert employee Crystal Womble, who grew up in the local black community and served as Krannert's liaison to it, the jam session with the Bridgewaters and young Clements was a homecoming.
"The energy level was out of this world," she said. "People who hadn't played in a long time, like Jelly Hines and Russ Cheatham, were out, and so were all these young people, and it was packed."
While Womble was excited, Clements was overwhelmed.
"I was getting up on stage, waiting on one of the vocalists, and I asked the trumpet player, Nathaniel Banks '73 FAA, MS '75 FAA, what you do when you want to not get nervous," Clements admitted.
"You just don't get nervous," Banks told him. It worked.
Bringing up the next generation is a jazz tradition. When he was coming up in the music world, Cecil relied on advice from his uncle, as well as older performers like Gene Ammons and Sonny Stitt, who was a direct link to Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie. At Illinois, Cecil learned from John Garvey, a viola player who became the unlikely founder of the U of I's big band. When Cecil moved to New York, he learned from — and played alongside — Horace Silver, Thad Lewis and Max Roach. Through Cecil, the thread runs through to Sam Hankins MS '94 FAA, now teaching another generation at a Champaign middle school.
This is the lineage the Krannert Center for the Performing Arts calls "Jazz Threads" at its oral history Web site, www.40north.org/jazzthreads. "There are a lot of jazz programs in Champaign, because there is such a culture through the University and community," Cecil said. "Some school districts in New York don't have a music program, let alone a jazz program."
Ada Lou Rogers and LaMonte Parsons Experience brighten an Afterglow session on a late December night at Krannert.
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Hankins is a beloved teacher and band leader at Cham-paign's Edison Middle School, whose highly accoladed jazz band recently returned from a trip to New York. He isn't beloved just because he makes music fun. Discipline is something that was handed down to him, and that he hands down,
a discipline that comes from not just being able to play the tune but to improvise new variations.
"Teaching about jazz, I am teaching about life," Hankins said. "Regardless of what you go into, you have to have goals. Music teaches you that."
Banks, another graduate of Garvey and Tony Zamora, musician and founder of the U of I's African American Cultural Center, says jazz is inseparable from life.
"In music, you draw on all of your past experiences. Like [musician] Marcus Roberts said, it's kind of like drawing out
of a very deep pond — everything that happens to you musically, you remember."
That's why Banks, who now heads the African American Cultural Center at Illinois, doesn't coddle Clements when he steps up to the big time at a jam session with Cecil.
When Clements puts down his saxophone, he looks around the room. Cecil smiles.
"I tried to make him a little more at ease," he said, as he threaded the joy of jazz into the next generation. "My uncle was the same way."
