Totally Unauthorized

Just twisting an old phrase.  Tonight we went to Yoshi’s in Oakland for a benefit concert by a band made up of Oakland Unified School District music teachers.  Our friend John Harrington was the trumpet player.

School music teachers are an interesting lot–they are pretty talented musicians, each competent on a variety of instruments, capable of conducting, teaching, composing and structuring a concert or show.  Many of them, it seems, have other outlets for performing–as a fund raiser, they were raffling off CDs that they had individually released.

We went with BJ Ledgerwood, just back from 2 weeks in Tanzania, and her friend June.

 

The band performed twice tonight, at 7 and at 9.  We were at the early show, which had a goodly contingent of young students there to see their teachers perform.

The music was big-band era, with at least on piece written by one of the teachers, and it was as completely professional as you would expect.

 

Not being part of the in crowd, we didn’t have reserved seats and were off to the side, so we never really got to see our friend John.  I went to the back of the room to get this photo–John is the guy with the trumpet dead center in the back.

 

Music departments need money, and they sure aren’t going to be getting it from the state–or the city, since the Oakland school district is pretty broke.  It’s a measure of the devotion these teachers have that they are willing to do this, not for their own benefit but for their students.  I’m glad we went.