As I grow older, I find more and more the desire to give back. It”s human nature to criticize and kudos and compliments are hard to come by and so if for no other reason but that I grateful, when people do something special, I like to show recognition to let them know they are appreciated. That”s what this story is about.
True musicians live for the love of playing and for the joy of sharing their music. Like most artists they don”t do what they do to get rich and few do. Their compensation is to make music for people who enjoy it and so when I find people like that, I want to acknowledge them and in a community like Lake County that has a vehicle as personal as the Lake County Record-Bee, to do so publicly.
Jim Leonardis has a small organic farm in Lakeport which provides a nice source of fresh produce for the Kelseyville school district and others as well as selling to customers who like to get their vegetables from local soil. He has a green thumb but he also has magic fingers when it comes to another one of his passions, the tenor sax.
If you close your eyes while listening to Jim Leonardis on saxophone, you might picture a monarch butterfly lighting on the keys and dancing between the notes as sweet music melts like butter and molasses in your ears and drips down in to that spot in your soul where you feel and you need not be of any particular age or ilk to appreciate what Jim and The Rural Jazz Project create on the spot. You need only be there and the music will do the rest. When you”re in the audience and they”re playing, you”re lifted and among faces lit with smile.
Leonardis is a Lake County treasure and his profoundly competent ensemble takes Lake County to levels heretofore only remembered, preserved on vinyl or rare recordings of times gone by and seldom if ever heard in clubs anywhere.
To say it is special isn”t enough. To experience it is to remember something as warm and sublime as those concerts that if you were lucky, you saw when music made you feel so good you got tingles down your spine. It hits something we miss, it reawakens what empowered, it recharges, it renews, it enlivens and best of all; it heals.
Yes, there is a music that is the medicine of medicines, the healer of healers, that which echoes the sacred, primal rhythms of our heart and for all who hear it, turns us in to torches, sources of illumination, angels, ambassadors of tenderness and generosity, forces of good, finders of like mind, keepers of the light.
You have a chance to hear this rare group of musician”s musicians in a benefit concert for community sponsored KPFZ the second weekend in July, Saturday the 12th at the Live Oak Grill in Kelseyville. It fills up quickly so you may want to call to be sure you don”t miss it. Prior to that Jim will play with The Dorian May trio Saturday, June 14th at The Live Oak which spotlights class acts in an atmosphere conducive to taking in good music.
Go and listen, climb on board, unfasten your seatbelt, open your ears and enjoy the flight. And thereon, while still in the afterglow, think of how you can in some way, some how give back.
Howard Glasser
Kelseyville
