July 21 at 3 pm
Palladium Theater, St Pete
Details here
A conversation with Frank Williams requires some prep – eight hours of sleep, a good breakfast, some stretching. After all, you’re going to be covering a lot of ground.
“I’ve worn many hats in my life,” says the 75-year-old musician-educator. “There’s the FAMU Marching 100 hat, the Boca Ciega band director hat, the Clearwater Jazz Holiday hat (he’s the organization’s education consultant). So I can talk about anything related to music, especially jazz in Florida. It just depends on how deep you want to go.”
Williams will be presented with the Educator of the Year award at the Al Downing Tampa Bay Jazz Association’s Al Downing Honors, set for Sunday at St. Pete’s Palladium Theater.
Sunday’s ceremony is named for iconic St. Petersburg resident Al Downing. Downing (1916-2000), a Jacksonville native and former Tuskegee Airman, taught music at Gibbs High School and St Petersburg College.
He established the Tampa Bay Jazz Association in 1981 with fellow Bay Area legend Ernie Calhoun. Over the past four decades, the organization has kept the music in the public eye through workshops, concerts and events.
“In the areas of support, presentations, bringing live jazz featuring local and national artists, the Al Downing Foundation is the most important organization in Tampa Bay,” Williams says.
Williams will be presented with the Educator of the Year award at Al Downing Honors on Sunday. He is one of three honorees – Michael Cornette, host of WUSF Public Media’s “All Night Jazz,” is Supporter of the Year.
Trumpeter Dwayne White has hosted the ADTBJA’s weekly jazz jam since 2010 and is the association’s Jazz Musician of the Year.
The Al Downing All-Stars – White, guitarist Vincent Sims, pianist Ben Winkler, bassist Eric Hempel, drummer Ron Gregg and vocalist Greg Porter – will perform at the ceremony, accompanied by 2024 scholarship winner Emani Baines on tenor sax.
Baines, whose influences include Dexter Gordon and John Coltrane, started playing alto sax in third grade but switched to tenor in middle school. But you don’t need her background to get into what she does.
“There is a lot of joy involved in playing and listening to jazz. You don’t have to know what you’re listening (to), to enjoy it.”
Sims agrees.
“Jazz was originally the popular music of the time,” he says. “So it is definitely accessible to the general public – it’s all in how it’s presented.”
Education is still important, says Williams. After all, live performance and promotion both inform the public about the art form, making them part of the educational spectrum. Just like in sports, the more you understand, the more you enjoy.
“People need the tools to evaluate the music,” he says. That explains William’s “many hats” – and his work with Clearwater Jazz Holiday’s Jazz in the Schools program.
His academic background includes an 11-year stint teaching in Erie, Pennsylvania, in addition to 30 years in Pinellas County. Along the way he taught too many professional musicians to name, starting with his two sons, Greg and Frank IV.
Bassist Greg is an alum of Wynton Marsalis’s and Elvin Jones’s bands. Frank IV drums with vibist Roy Ayers. Williams also taught trombonist Kendrick McAlister, trumpeter Jason Charos and sax player David Mason, playing in Grammy-winning singer Samara Joy’s horn section.
Pinellas is and has been home to dozens of national and world-class jazz musicians – late pianist Kenny Drew Jr., percussionist Gumbi Ortiz, bassist John Lamb, electric bassist Jeff Berlin, trombonist Buster Cooper. But the farm program is just as important as the starting roster.
Williams is careful to distinguish between standard classical-based music instruction and jazz instruction. Each has its own pedagogy and repertoire, but instructors in Florida are more likely to have a primary background in the former than the latter, dating back to his time in the FAMU Marching 100 band.
“William Foster (father of the Black college marching band) kicked me out over my love for jazz. You would think there would be a greater appreciation for jazz at an HBCU, but the opposite is often true. Consequently, there aren’t a lot of educators that have a strong jazz background,” he explains. “So you have fewer jazz bands in the schools and even fewer schools playing jazz at a high level.
“I am an extremely rare commodity – a music educator practicing and teaching jazz. There aren’t a lot of colleges that require even a single course in jazz for graduation or certification.”
That’s why Williams is keeping busy.
“I’m not sitting on the back porch waiting to die,” he laughs. “Between working with the Big Band at Ruth Eckerd and workshops with the Clearwater Jazz Holiday, I’m seeing more kids than I did in 30 years of teaching.
“There is still a lot of work to do”.
Sunday, July 21 at 3 pm
Palladium Theater
253 5th Ave N
St. Petersburg FL 33701
Ticket information here
