What a glorious week! Follow this link to our Flickr album of photos from the 2009 Lafayette Summer Music Workshop. Here’s a sneak peek…

(Photos by Dan Rosenstrauch)

Wayne Wallace enjoys a jam session at the Lafayette Summer Music Workshop 2009 (Photos by Dan Rosenstrauch).

Another combo rehearses at jazz camp

Frank Martin grooves with his combo

Jamie Davis and Louis Aissen play for the jazz workshop campers at a faculty performance Wednesday afternoon.

Today’s the last day of jazz camp — parents, be there at 3:30 for the end-of-camp summer jazz concert! All 22 combos are performing, as well as the full faculty, so it’s hours of fun. If you pre-ordered dinner, pick up the delicious fare on site. If you forgot, no worries … grab a picnic and come join us. And you can buy sweets and treats from the enticing dessert table too.

Another great day at jazz camp! Pictured above: John Santos, Mark Ferber and Michaelle Goerlitz perform during the faculty jam just after lunch. We’ll post photos from the kids’ jam sessions later today. (Photo by Amy Burrell)

Today was fantastic! The opening festivities included the Horace Silver tune “Strollin’” – and halfway through, the staff had morphed the Silver classic into some other tune and then back again. As if that wasn’t spectacular enough, they also played a piece trombonist Wayne Wallace composed last week. From there, everyone headed off for master classes and combos. After a delicious pasta lunch, kids scattered into their various elective classes, including a very well atttended Percussion for Non-Percussionists session, as well as a B-3 summit – with 5 B-3 Hammond organs all going at once! – and more jams for the blues, funk, Latin jazz and Brazilian. In short, music wafted down every hall all day.

Tomorrow: More of the same … only even better.

Lafayette jazz kids know Frank Sumares as the consummate jazz piano teacher, king of improvisation and “Unca Funk.” But Sumares is also a professor in the Jazz Studies Program at San Jose State University and professor emeritus at Hayward’s Chabot College, where he was the director of jazz studies and instrumental music for more than 25 years. He teaches jazz theory, improvisation and piano at Berkeley’s JazzSchool, and at Jamie Aebersold Jazz Camps here and abroad, and has written three books on the art of improvisation. His performance resume includes gigs with Mel Torme, Patti Page, Sarah Vaughn and Della Reese, as well as many of the artists who come and teach at Lafayette Summer Music Workshop every year. And one of his former students was … Bob Athayde.

Trombonist and sound engineer Jeff Cressman is probably most famous to kids as a sideman for Carlos Santana’s sold-out “Supernatural” tour and every other Santana tour from 2000 to 2009. Their parents likely know the Berkeley native from his many gigs with Tito Puente, Poncho Sanchez, Israel “Cachao” Lopez, Pete Escovedo and Charlie Hunter. When he’s not playing gigs, Cressman is behind the mixing board as staff engineer for the San Francisco Jazz Festival, where he has mixed Betty Carter, Sonny Rollins and other jazz notables. This marks his first year at the Lafayette Summer Music Workshop.

Trombonist Dave Martell isn’t just famous here at home, the Bay Area native has performed with Earl Hines, Woody Herman, Cab Calloway, Natalie Cole, The Temptations, Johnny Mathis, Lou Rawls and Burt Bacharach. His discography includes recordings with Ray Brown’s Great Big Band, Dave Eshelman’s Jazz Garden Big Band, and the Black Market Jazz Orchestra. And he has played in the national touring productions of such musicals as “The Full Monty” and “The Producers.” But it’s his skills as a music educator that make him such a favorite at Lafayette’s jazz camp. Martell has taught music at every level, from elementary school to college, and has been on the music faculty of the New Haven school district for the last 27 years, and his arrangements and original compositions designed especially for jazz camp – including his “Be Athayde, Be Very Athayde” – are legendary.

Alto sax man Douglas Yates is a longtime sideman whose resume includes performances with such luminaries as Stan Getz, Gary Burton, the Mingus Big Band, Cab Calloway, Carla Bley and the Phil Woods Little Big Band. His recordings with the Either/Orchestra include “Across the Omniverse” and “Calculus of Pleasure, where he was featured on bass clarinet on the Grammy-nominated “Benny Moten’s Weird Nightmare.” He currently plays with the Mingus Orchestra and a variety of small ensembles including the  George Garzone Quintet and  Jon Ballantyne Quartet. Yates is a graduate of Acalanes High, by the way.

Got drums? If you’re worrying about how to ferry your gear back and forth during camp week – er, BART? – fret no more. Bring a drum rug and your drum kit on audition day, Aug. 2,  and you’re welcome to  store them at the Lafayette Summer Music Workshop camp site for the week. (Rooms are locked and alarms are armed each night, but instruments are left at your own risk.)