This isn't the exact version that went in the paper, but it's good enough, right? Hahah.


To kick start the holiday season, Cabrillo Jazz Instructor Ray Brown and his Great Big Band will perform tonight in the College Theatre at 7:30 p.m.
The band consists of mostly All Star musicians from San Francisco, accompanied by some former students and Ray's brother Steve Brown, who will be playing guitar and drums.
Throughout this afternoon, there will be various clinics available to all students specializing in saxophone, trombone, trumpet, rhythm, and improvisation. For more information, please contact the cabrillo music department.

For 33 years, Ray Brown has been educating Cabrillo College students about jazz improvisation, theory, and arranging.
Brown was hired in 1975 by Lile Cruse, who was looking to expand the jazz studies program at Cabrillo. After being on the road with the Stan Kenton Band for a year and a half, Brown taught part time in New York, and finally found what he was looking for here at Cabrillo.
“This was a complete jazz job,” said Brown. “Which were few and far between at that time. …There were very few places, if anywhere, that had a full-time jazz only position. So this was very special.”
Brown's experience with the hiring process was difficult, but definitely worth it.
“It was a long day,” said Brown. “I played at a wedding the night before from 9:00 pm to 2:00 am and I took a 6:30 am plane out of Kennedy, flew to San Francisco and then came [to Cabrillo] to run a rehearsal and play and I had interviews and so on and so forth. Then I got back on a plane and got back to New York at 7 in the morning and made it in time to teach my class at 9:00 in the morning.”
But Brown didn't always plan on being a teacher, “Up to my senior year in high school, I was going to go to Cornell for Hotel Administration. I was going to run a hotel, and the reason was so that I could have a jazz club in it that I could play in. In January of my senior year in high school, I realized the musical abilities that my parents had given me. I just thought everybody could do what I could do. I could do a lot of things, but it wasn't anything special, because in my family, I was the worst one. I never realized that other people couldn't write charts and improvise and stuff like that. I thought everybody did that. And only then did I realize how advanced I was from other people. Because in my house, it was the norm. At that point I decided to go into music. I really wasn't sure, but within a year I realized I was in the right place. From that point on I knew what I wanted to do.”
Brown went to Ithaca College in upstate New York, and studied classical music theory. As a junior he ran the Jazz Lab Band, which, he says, benefitted him greatly. He was able to learn how to work with his friends, but run a great band at the same time.
However, most of Brown's education came from his father, who started jazz education in America in 1944. Glenn Brown had elementary jazz bands, junior high jazz bands, and high school jazz bands in Long Beach, NY, and Ray's biggest influence has come from his experiences as a kid.
“Whatever I teach my students comes from how my dad taught me,” said Brown. “My whole curriculum is based on what I learned from him.”
Aside from what Ray learned at home, he gained playing experience in his father's jazz camp at Lake Winnipesaukee in New Hampshire.
“We had classes in arranging, copying, and improvisation. We rehearsed every day for an hour, and we had sectionals every day. After about two weeks we would go out and play four or five nights a week at all the camps around the lake.”
“That was an unbelievable education for me,” said Brown. “Nothing I could have gotten anywhere else.”
After graduating from college, Brown went into the army. He and some friends joined an Army Band, knowing that it would guarantee them the opportunity to play, and after one year, Brown found out that the army started a jazz band. Modeled after Glenn Miller's Big Band, the Airmen of Note, the Army's Studio Band was formed, and Ray found a way to join the band.
“I don't know how I did this, but they only had four trumpets and I convinced them to go to five.”
Ray became the jazz trumpet player for the band, and he was also a writer. He was able to rehearse the band and again find himself working amongst his peers. With this experience he learned that he was on the same level as some of the greatest players in the world, which he had not known when he was growing up.
When it came time for Ray to leave the band, he had made friends with these great musicians, some of whom had played with Stan Kenton. Two months after leaving the service, Ray received a call from Stan Kenton, asking if he would play with his band. To which Ray says, “Of course I said yes.”
Ray toured with Stan Kenton's Band for a year and a half as the jazz trumpet player, and ran all of the jazz improvisation clinics they held, which provided him with plenty of practice with teaching and running classes. He traveled and played in every club and major performance venue in the world.
After his experience with Stan Kenton, Ray got his master's degree and married Sue Brown, who is also a music instructor at Cabrillo. The two freelanced in New York for about two years before moving to California for Ray's position at Cabrillo, and after about five years, Sue was hired to run the strings and chamber music program.
Brown can now write and play for whatever he wants. When he was a freelancer he had to take every performance and job he got called for.
“That's the kind of stuff that teaching allows me to do on the side. That's what's really been cool about being here. As well as the students I've worked with; there have been a number of great players and it's been a pleasure to work with those people and see them go around and become major forces in the music world.”