High School Quintet to play at Healdsburg Jazz Festival

The Healdsburg High School jazz program has come a long way in
the two years since the class was felled by the budget axe.
The school’s jazz quintet—led by nationally recognized guitarist
Kai Devitt-Lee—is preparing to play in next month’s Healdsburg Jazz
Festival, a goal high school music instructor Randy Masselink
believes has taken the boys far this year. The program has thrived
in recent months under the tutelage of jazz musician Lorca Hart,
who was hired through a $6,000 donation by the Lipton family
earlier this year.
“They’ve done really, really well,” said Masselink. “They
started out as a strong group at the beginning of the year, and
[Hart] has taken them and added an entire new dimension.”
Devitt-Lee is joined by Dean Shakked on bass, Alex Flores on
drums, Trevor O’Connor on trumpet and Colin Deas on baritone sax.
The quintet also has a group of understudies who stand in when
needed, including bassist Haden Shoup and drummers Will McCurry and
Oliver Lipton.
The program has succeeded despite California’s ongoing budget
crisis, which in 2008 forced the Healdsburg Unified School District
to eliminate the zero period jazz class from the high school
schedule. Masselink did what he could to preserve the program,
moving it to his regular concert band class and allowing the
handful of dedicated students the opportunity to continue playing
jazz.
This opened the door to Devitt-Lee, a talented sophomore who
fell in love with the art form two years earlier at the Healdsburg
Jazz Festival. In the two years since he’s led the program to new
heights, including an opportunity to play at the upcoming jazz
festival with some of jazz’s biggest legends and rising stars.
“They’ve all benefited from his presence,” said Masselink. “He
leads the group in his way. His knowledge and exposure of jazz has
been huge. He practices, practices, practices. That is what he is,
what he does. He’s one of those guys who music chose him. I don’t
think he ever had to choose music.”
Messelink’s background is in classical music, and he welcomes
both Devitt-Lee’s and Hart’s guidance and leadership into the high
school jazz program. “The differences with jazz, the kids need to
learn tremendously more about harmony and how music is put together
because they need to learn to improvise,” he said.
Hart has enjoyed working with the quartet and hopes to continue
with them next year. “They’re such a good group of guys,” he said.
“I’ve tried to take what really existed before I got there and kind
of challenged them a little,” he said. “Up their musicality and
give them some ideas of what to work on.”
He spoke highly of what the quintet had accomplished in the past
two years. “The guys have been getting together on their own and
doing a pretty good job of it,” he said. “Kai had kind of acted as
their leader in a lot of ways because he’s the most dedicated to
jazz and most committed to being the professional and carrying this
on outside of school.”
Devitt-Lee, 16, performs often outside of school with
professional musicians from all over the Bay Area. He will play the
Healdsburg Jazz Festival with both the high school quintet and with
his own group, the Kai Devitt-Lee Trio. In the past few months he’s
been named to the California high school jazz band, and to the 2010
Brubeck Institute Summer Jazz Colony in August.
Devitt-Lee hopes to attend music conservatory or music school
after he graduates next year—“Julliard would be preferable”—and
then to pursue a life as a professional musician.
“[Jazz] is just a great form of music,” he said. “It’s very
expressive. Hearing it live is what really got me.”