Review: Oak Ridge jazz concert features a memorable duet

John Job, Music reviewTue, May 5, 2026 at 8:24 AM UTC

0

There’s a point in every concert where the performers’ intentions and the audience’s perceptions either meet or fail to meet, with defining consequences either way. If intentions and perceptions meet, it unlocks doors you never knew were there to open. If intentions and perceptions miss the mark, you might as well have stayed home and gazed at your tablet. Such moments distill the whole enterprise in a singular beautiful breath that makes everything crystal clear.

I saw that clarity last Sunday afternoon, April 19, in a moment that took my own breath away, midway through the Knoxville Youth Jazz Orchestra’s second set at Bud’s Farmhouse Coffee Shop in Oak Ridge. It came after trumpet maestro Jim Hynes introduced Oak Ridge High School student Cynthia Marcus-Brock before they played Jesse Greer’s 1929 hit “Just You, Just Me,” arranged by the KJO’s Vance Thompson.

And the amazing thing is ... I caught the moment on video.

It was a very brisk Sunday for jazz. The sun was a dominant presence, but the wind bedeviled everyone. If your scores weren’t in a three-ring binder, the wind stole them and they’d end up at Food City’s front doors. To make it worse, the wind got colder as the band warmed up.

Before hands and mouthpieces could freeze, the KYJO kicked it off with Lionel Hampton’s “Red Top,” an extended swing that gave the growing audience a sense of the band’s

polish. From the get-go, the sound was full, determined, and sure of itself.

After “Red Top,” the band started building a head of steam with Sam Jones’ “Unit Seven,” Dean Sorenson’s “When the Saints Come Marching In,” and George Gershwin’s “Our Love is Here to Stay.”

Tom Lundberg, who heads the young artists program at the KJO, took a few minutes to introduce all the players and let us know they come from Bearden, Farragut, Central, and Oak Ridge high schools, Roane County High, Hardin Valley Academy, the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, a middle school in Maryville, Christian schools in Concord and Knoxville, and a home school group in Greenback.

Then Ryan Middagh’s “The Commissioner” gave Jacob Poling a chance to showcase his amazing fluidity on trombone, a command that will take him later this year to the College of Music at the University of North Texas in Denton, the most prestigious jazz school in the country. Ryan Middagh heads the jazz and world music program at Vanderbilt, so young Jacob is hanging with the best of the best.

Advertisement

The first set wrapped up with Oliver Nelson’s “Miss Fine,” George M. Cohan’s “Give My Regards to Broadway,” and Jeff Jarvis’s “Bistro Latino,” which made me dream of seeing Rita Moreno merengue through the door at Bud’s Farmhouse with a cup of coffee in each hand.

After a brief intermission, the KYJO returned with Jim Hynes in front, and that’s when things got really interesting. The set began with “Aim High” by the late Fred Sturm. Like Jim, Sturm was an alumnus of the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York.

That simple statement, (The set began with “Aim High”), like everything in jazz, is steeped in oceans of tradition, erudition, and cultural connection, because Sturm was one of the most gifted, respected, creative, and loved jazz educators America has ever produced. “Aim High” is much more than the title of one of his countless compositions. It was Sturm’s mantra, and he passed that advice along to every student who was ever lucky enough to know him.

Sturm was more than a gifted educator though, because he left a lifelong legacy as a writer, composer, arranger, conductor, and performer. Just ask Clark Terry, Bobby McFerrin, Wynton Marsalis, Branford Marsalis, and the NDR Big Band in Hamburg, or any of the many other collaborators he collected.

“Aim High” was the perfect intro to “Just You, Just Me.” When Jim introduced Cynthia Marcus-Brock, she calmly took her place at a mike next to his, and they made “Just You ...” their own. Most people know the tune as an innocently flirty song by Ella Fitzgerald, Nat King Cole, Diane Krall, or one of the many other jazz singers who have made this nearly 100-year-old song a beloved standard. But on this Sidewalk Concert Sunday, it was a trumpet duet between a consummate professional and his teen-aged protégé, backed by the class act of the KYJO guys. It was pretty cool to see how slick they all were.

The piece featured simple call-and-response “verses,” where Jim would play a phrase, and Cynthia’s response was to repeat it, note for note, nuance for nuance, and she pulled it off with an assurance that just made your heart race. After the first give-and-take, Cynthia and Jim lowered their horns just enough to give each other a nod and a smile, and that said it all. That was the Big Ears vibe, the ineffable exchange of just you, just me, just perfect. I had to pinch myself to be sure I wasn’t dreaming what I was seeing and hearing.

Now the band was heading full speed down a black diamond run to the finish, skillfully negotiating the groomed steepness of Alan Baylock’s arrangement of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow,” Duke Ellington’s “Portrait of Louis Armstrong,” Hoagie Carmichael’s “Stardust,” and Ellington’s “Concerto for Cootie,” which they absolutely nailed. And then somehow they saved the best for last ... a commanding version of Billy Eckstine’s arrangement of Dexter Gordon’s classic “Second Balcony Jump.”

Then I saw something Id never seen before... an instantaneous standing ovation in Food City’s parking lot, from the happiest knot of music lovers I’ve seen in a long time. These Sidewalk Concerts have become a real thing. An Oak Ridge thing.

John Job is a longtime Oak Ridge resident and frequent contributor to The Oak Ridger.

1) Jim Hynes and Cynthia Markus-Brock play 'Just You, Just Me.'

The superb brass section of the Knoxville Youth Jazz Orchestra performs on the sidewalk in front of Bud's Farmhouse coffee shop in Oak Ridge.

This article originally appeared on Oakridger: Knoxville youth jazz orchestra shines in Oak Ridge

Original Article on Source

Source: “AOL Entertainment”