The dance floor will be crowded with couples and the hall full of happy diners when the 17 musicians of Three Rivers Big Band present their third annual Christmas concert at The Club Room at The Clyde on Wednesday, Dec. 20. 

There’s no cover for this 7 p.m. show, but reservations are encouraged at clydeclubroom.com. 

Music for the ages

Whether you can swing dance or you just want to sit back and have a drink while you watch and listen, you’ll get your holiday cheer in the most energetic, upbeat, and sophisticated form of acoustic jazz, played by members aged from their early 20s through their late 60s.

“When I look out at the audience and I see that there’s eight or 10 couples dancing to these songs from the 1940s, that’s an absolute win,” said upright bass player Dave Martin.

Martin is proud of how diverse the audience is, especially in age. 

“We have folks in their 20s who have their young kids,” he said. “And some of our people are in their 80s and early 90s who remember the music from the first time!”

The heyday of big band was in the 1940s. Big band is an enduring musical tradition born in the U.S. There are three functioning groups in Fort Wayne: at just over 2 years old, Three Rivers Big Band is the youngest and maybe the hippest of the lot. The other groups are Fort Wayne Jazz Orchestra and New Millennium Jazz Orchestra, each in their 25th year.

Big band got its start 90 years ago in the Great Depression with groups fronted by giants including clarinetist Benny Goodman, trombonist Glenn Miller, and pianist William “Count” Basie. It was the jazz born in New Orleans, but scaled up large in urban centers like New York, Chicago, and Kansas City, Missouri. The music evolved rapidly as bands got bigger and louder. Swing dancing evolved with the music.

The swing era spanned the Great Depression, World War II, and, championed by singers like Frank Sinatra, on through the ’50s and ’60s. Big band kept on swinging hard against the encroaching existential threat of rock n’ roll with its stacks of amplifiers. 

The music endures as an important training ground for young musicians.

Starting a band

Trombonist Marcus Farr came up through the Fort Wayne public school system, and that’s where he caught the bug for jazz, which sent him to the School of Music at the former Indiana Purdue University Fort Wayne. Now he teaches the next generation. 

“I’m a music instructor at Fort Wayne Community Schools at North Side High School,” he said. “I’m the pep band director at Purdue Fort Wayne.”

In separate interviews this year, I spoke with Fort Wayne’s own Broadway star, singer Heather Headley, and renowned young rock drummer Jordan West. They each spoke glowingly about playing big band in local high schools and how that influenced their music careers.

Farr and Martin met about eight years ago while playing in The Sweetwater All Stars, the rock band that anchors The Club Room. Martin, a Nashville, Tennessee, recording engineer and a player of upright bass and bass guitar, had come to work at Sweetwater Studios. Over the years Martin got to know a lot of Sweetwater sales engineers, many of whom had a strong background in jazz. But most of them these days concentrate on their day jobs and don’t play much. Martin wanted to give them an opportunity to get their chops back.

Farr agreed to lead informal rehearsals, and a certain baritone saxophone player named Chuck Surack had a large collection of big band orchestra sheet music, which he offered for their use, then asked if he could play with them.

“The playing was the point,” Martin said of the band. “We did that for a few months. And then there’s a venue in town called The Club Room, and we know the guy who owns it (Surack). He suggested that we start doing our rehearsals over there on a Sunday afternoon. We did that for a couple of months, and then one of our trumpet players said, ‘I think we could probably do a Christmas show.’ ”

Since their debut, Three Rivers Big Band plays The Club Room and have been regular performers at the weekly Wednesday Jazz Sessions.

Keeping the music alive

The music is not just from the ’40s. Three Rivers Big Band play arrangements from all the years since, whether they are pop standards, the prodigious strain of Latin jazz, or even movie and video game soundtracks. 

The band is more than Sweetwater folks. 

“We have some people like Marcus and Jay Jehl who are band directors,” Martin said. “We have music teachers. We have at least a couple of self-employed musicians who don’t teach. We have a couple of church music directors.”

In addition to Farr, Martin, and Surack, the band features trumpet players Matt Schuler, Alan Parr, Barry Parr, Dave Wishler, Brett Kelsey, and Lexie Signor; trombonists Adam Robey, Jehl, and Andrew Wagner; alto saxophonists Matt Cashdollar and Kevin Buck; tenor saxophonists Ed Renz and James Middleton; pianist Jonathan Pass; guitarist Mike Neglia; and drummer Sean Parr.

“I think it goes to show it’s definitely something that can stick with you through the years,” Farr said. “Matt Cashdollar and I were in the North Side High School big band together.

“What I like to tell people, especially students, is that there’s always somewhere for you to play. That’s what this band proves. There’s always somewhere for you to play. The rewarding part for me is just seeing that we are all still doing this after all these years.”

For Martin, getting together with friends to play the music they love is what it is all about.

“We have this wonderfully wide range of people,” he said. “As long as we have enough people for a band that love playing this music, we’re going to keep doing it.”