In 1969, the band director at Fenton High School in Bensenville, Illinois, decided to take our choir and concert band on a European tour. Every other year, the music students went on a combined music tour somewhere in the United States, but this year the director chartered two Stretch DC8 jets, filling one with adults, friends, and neighbors for an inexpensive tour to Germany, Switzerland, and Salzburg, Austria. The adults paid for the trip at a price that was very affordable but high enough that it covered most of the band and choir’s flight and expenses, so no student would have to miss this 16-day adventure.
One brilliant strategy of our director, Fred Lewis, was that he arranged for the two groups to have separate itineraries. The families had only a few opportunities to hear the band and choir perform, so the musicians would have plenty of time to focus on their music.
We all landed in Stuttgart, Germany, and had a glorious 16 days of performances throughout Germany and Switzerland. We were well received and appreciated, even at the one castle that had somehow lost track that we were coming!
Not too long after our tour had first been announced to us, the members of our jazz band were sitting in the lobby of the school’s music department during a break, and one of our band members brought an article from the Sunday supplement of a local newspaper announcing a new jazz festival in Montreux, Switzerland. It was described as a jazz competition, and we would be nearby in Zurich when it was being held, so someone suggested that our jazz band enter it. Everyone laughed, but then the room got very quiet. Why not? We applied and waited, but not for long. The promoters of the Montreux Jazz Festival heard our tape and thought featuring one of America’s student jazz bands was a great idea. They even offered for us to stay at their Grand Hotel for a whole week! But we only accepted one night’s stay, since our band and choir tour would still have other events to play.
When June 19 came around, we had just arrived in Zurich, and all of our jazz band members loaded onto two very short school buses for a drive of several hours negotiating winding mountain roads on the way to Montreux. When we arrived, the festival organizers seemed surprised at how young we were. We were immediately spirited to the stage of the casino. (By the way, this was the casino that burned down a few years later during a Deep Purple concert and became the subject of their hit “Smoke on the Water.”) Our first jazz concert was at 4:00 in the afternoon, and students from all over Europe came to hear us play because the casino was closed to them in the evening. The performance went well and they seemed delighted.
Our evening performance carried far more weight. Our warm-up music group was the brilliant saxophonist Phil Woods, and we were the featured act of the night! We were on international live television, and if that wasn’t enough, I had to perform my featured trumpet solo, Thelonius Monk’s “’Round Midnight,” while standing by myself in front of the band!
Happily, all went well. We played great material, including some current charts from the latest Buddy Rich albums. We were led by my dear friend Brad Bilhorn, a brilliant drummer who kept perfect time and captured every nuance of Buddy’s playing. The next morning, we hopped back onto the buses and wound our way back to Zurich to resume our tour. For so many reasons, it was the trip of a lifetime, and for a while, I had a hard time setting new musical goals.
For the last few years, I have tried to contact the organization that runs the Montreux Jazz Festival, hoping to find our music archived, but so far my efforts have been to no avail. Weirdly, the printed material has been modified to list only the most famous musical groups, and even the concert poster of a naked lady holding a trumpet has been changed.
Recently, I tried to see what AI could find about that concert, and it explained how over the years we might have been omitted due to our lack of fame. I kept feeding more details to ChatGPT, and with every new detail, it would tell me that, yes, it was likely I’d actually been there. After about an hour, it finally found Fenton High School Stage Band on a performer list.
Fifty-seven years later, I still play jazz in a big band here in Fairfield, and play with Keosauqua’s Tarnished Brass concert band and the Fairfield Municipal Band. And now, thanks to the best music server apps, I listen to more music than ever before. It sounds more real than ever, with high-resolution remasters, digital converters that don’t ruin the timing of the music, and the most musical amps and speakers.
Never stop reliving your best musical moments.