The Uniondale High School auditorium was filled with the warm and soulful sounds of jazz music on March 6, when the Knightime Jazz Band entertained an audience during its inaugural Jazz Night.
The evening was designed not just to entertain, but also to celebrate student musicians.
Colton Wynter, Uniondale’s music director who has led the program for about 20 years, said Jazz Night was created specifically to spotlight the dedication of the students. Joseph Boardman, also a Knightime Jazz Band director, has served for seven years.
“I have a great bunch of kids,” Wynter said. “They work hard, and they’re very good players — they need to be appreciated and celebrated. I figured a night like this would be a great opportunity for them to be celebrated, so people could see how great they are.”
Some of the selections that the jazz band performed during the evening included “All of Me,” written by Gerald Marks and Seymour Simons, with arrangement by Billy Byers; and “Time After Time,” a classic romantic jazz standard with words by Sammy Cahn, music by Jule Styne and arrangement by Don Schamber. “Time After Time” appeared in “It Happened in Brooklyn,” a 1947 Frank Sinatra film.
After intermission, the Knightime band performed the notable “Put Your Head On My Shoulder,” originally sung and written by Paul Anka in 1959, and remixed by Streets X in 2018.
“We’ve done jazz performances before, but this is the first time we’ve done something like this in our school, and hopefully it won’t be the last,” Wynter said.
About two dozen students were involved in the performances, after rehearsing during the school day and often beyond it. Wynter said the band spends the majority of its time together preparing for performances and practicing in general, describing it as a 12-month class.
For senior Amaya Grier, the night represented more than just another performance — it was the culmination of weeks of preparation. For the March 6 show, she was the lead trumpet player, which carried significant musical and leadership responsibility. Her younger sister, Mikayla, also took part in the concert, playing a solo on the saxophone.
“We’ve been preparing for tonight for about a month or a month and a half,” Grier, who’s in her third year in jazz band, said. “The most challenging part was definitely playing high notes, considering I’m the lead trumpet player.”
Joining the students on stage were special guest artists, including Frank Abel, a former director of bands at Uniondale, where he spent 15 years directing students. He began in 1996 where he and his students received international and national recognition during his time there.
Through his contributions to music education, he was inducted into the Long Island Music and Entertainment Hall of Fame as an Educator of Note in 2022.
Andy Farber, a veteran saxophonist and Juilliard School professor who grew up surrounded by jazz, also returned to his roots on Long Island.
“There was always music in the house,” Farber said, recalling a childhood spent listening to his father’s record collection. “We were mostly listening to jazz from the late ‘50s through the early ‘60s, a lot of Art Blakey, Miles Davis, John Coltrane.”
More than 50 years later, he’s still playing.
“Music is always played at a much higher energy level when people perform for a live audience,” Farber said. “Concerts are this communal experience, which is enriching for both the musicians and the audience. They bring their ‘A’ game.”
For Grier, that communal energy is what makes performing so powerful.
“Music really shapes lives,” she said. “My horn, what I play, speaks a thousand other words that I can’t say. Everybody can understand music. It’s really enjoyable for me to know that I can spread a message through what I play.”
Jazz Night deepened her appreciation for the genre, and while working with the guest artists, she explained, she learned something from them.
“Jazz isn’t always what’s written on the paper,” Grier said. “You don’t have to read the paper to know what’s going on. It’s more of a conversation between one another.”
That sense of conversation, collaboration and spontaneity was central to the evening’s performance. And despite the challenge, the lead trumpet player said jazz has been part of her life as long as she can remember. Her father is a drummer and the sounds filled her home growing up.
When Wynter teaches his students, he shares his belief that jazz offers them something unique, both musically and personally.
“Jazz music is American music,” he said. “It’s a uniquely American art form. It’s a democratic art form that allows people to create and be creative. It’s our heritage as Americans.”
For the Knightime Jazz students, he added, the experience develops far more than performance skills.
“To sound like this at a high school level, it’s a lot of hard work, dedication and time spent perfecting your craft,” Wynter said.
The director also expressed hope that the audience left not only entertained, but also inspired.
“I hope they’re happy and content, and they continue to listen to jazz and be inspired by our performance,” he added.
