PORT ANGELES — These young musicians are playing to help preserve a great American tradition — Dixieland jazz.
The Olympic Dixielanders, sponsored by the Jazz in the Olympics Society, are playing on a high note this year as they mark their own 10-year-old tradition.
Young musicians have come and gone, but they never leave without a good feel for the jazz genre.
“This is an effort by the jazz society to perpetuate Dixieland jazz, made popular by Louis Armstrong in the 1920s,” said Bud Critchfield, a longtime Sequim resident and former Port of Port Angeles commissioner who helped found the youth music program.
Program director
The program now is directed by Signe Crawford, a clarinetist and longtime music instructor in Port Angeles.
Others who have directed the youth band are Jerry Yahna, Sanford Feibus, George Snyder and Al Harris, Critchfield said.
“This music form is not taught in the public school systems. It allows the individual players to demonstrate their unique capabilities,” he added.
The group, with players ages 13 to 17, is under Crawford’s direction, and they practice Tuesday nights in Port Angeles High School’s band room.
20 performances annually
Each year, the band puts on about 20 performances, including the annual Jazz Festival in Port Angeles, the Juan de Fuca Festival of the Arts, with the Sequim City Band, at Sequim Community Church and at many retirement and assisted living venues.
The band’s next performance will be a warm-up for the Senior Swingers’ dance at 7 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 9, at the Port Angeles Senior Center, 327 E. Seventh St.
As a partial reward for their work and dedication, the group is sponsored every year to attend the Heebie Jeebies Jazz Camp at Camp David Jr., the Clallam County camp on the western shore of Lake Crescent.
‘Wonderful music’
“It’s wonderful music, and I think anybody will tell you that it makes you feel good when you listen to it,” said the band’s banjo player and vocalist, Cole Gibson, a 17-year-old Port Angeles High School student.
He spoke in between practicing “Everybody Loves My Baby,” a popular and jazz standard composed by Spencer Williams in 1924.
Gibson is joined in the band by Amber Wood, piano; Gavin Alward and James Reike, drums; Cole Urnes, tuba; Nathanael Mullins, trumpet; Jess Allyn Rogers, trumpet; Michaela Rogers, trumpet; CJ Urnes, clarinet and tenor; and Joshua Mullins, clarinet.
It’s CJ Urnes’ fifth year with the Olympic Dixielanders. He’s a Port Angeles High School senior, and Crawford calls him the band’s “spark plug.”
He joined the band after seeing it perform at the Jazz Festival.
Have to feel it’
“This music is not very cerebral,” Urnes said. “You have to feel it.”
Joshua Mullins is the band’s youngest talent at 13, playing alongside his brother Nathanael, 17, both home-schooled.
Crawford, a longtime North Olympic Peninsula professional musician and instructor, admitted she was not originally too fond of the music when Critchfield approached her about leading the band three years ago.
“But I got more of a feel for the history of it,” she said, and that appealed to her musical interests.
Audience disappearing
She has since joined Jim Quick’s Dungeness Dixieland Band and plays clarinet with them.
“The audience is going away, so it is important to get to the young people to help continue the base of appreciation,” Crawford said.
Contact Critchfield, Jazz in the Olympics youth program director, at 360-582-3082 to ask about joining the band.
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Sequim-Dungeness Valley Editor Jeff Chew can be reached at 360-681-2391 or at jeff.chew@peninsuladailynews.com.
