hey everybody welcome to talking jazz with intel where today we have my great friend and we've known each other for a long long time and actually a nancy sure a walk and i go bit way back to maybe around two thousand and three two thousand and four and now we're to talk about the mike sherlock memorial jazz festival which is happening in september and we're going to talk about all things jazz and talk about the beginnings and it's nancy it's a great to have you here it's great to be here thank you so much for inviting me how you're welcome  i've never you've been in a studio so that's even a new experience yeah it's this studio it's been around for a long long time but and it's great for the community because and for me personally it's been a great because i'm like really getting a lot of people that are involved in jazz and a lot of people behind the scenes so that's what this is all about you've been doing so much work on the festival almost on your own you know for many many years and i think one was we were talking about when was purely by accident it's a funny story i was looking for something for him for christmas and we live across the street from a music store so i went in and i thought well you know i don't know what the heck you know so i bought a saxophone and money opened it up he said he was a little perplexed because in place x is what is this and i said well i just you know it's something new maybe so what kind of once once he had passed away we decided to remember him and like music by the leg and leave a legacy so my daughters and i helped the helping for sure and we went and applied for and created this foundation the michael of charlotte foundation so and we i mean we do have a mission statement in our mission statement really states that and in fact i read a little bit of it for sure so yeah i didn't really think after sixty years i would memorize it but i don't  it's it's to support and sponsor musical and community events in the memory of like sherlock whose love of music and family lives on through these events the foundation also supports cancer research through donations to existing research and medical organizations agree so it's not just the concerts right we do make there's a bigger bigger vision right so we do make donations to cancer society he had died from lung cancer so it's the foundation is a nonprofit found of his by myself and my children and he had many passions throughout life including a great love for music he lost his battle to cancer at the age of fifty and that foundation serves as an enduring memorial to mike to share his love for music and to continue his philosophy of during every moment and joining every moment and life itself our hope is that through this special community events others will be able to share what special moments with their loved ones so that's great and that's in the beautiful thing with jazz that i love is that it is it's like a celebration of the human spirit you know it's like that it's and some of the people who come to the jazz festivals are just some great people i mean they just know they love the music and the energy i love the energy of a of a festival you know house so sixteen years or eight so well i'm only connected to great people so that's that's it you know that's how it happens and again all these years later i'm so glad that we got a chance to connect in and tell the folks about this so let's talk about the festival when it's going to be because actually in august this year oh it's you know like a certain august i go that's ok it's it had it had moved into september which actually was a cooler month i was thinking about a poster that i had my way has been that we did have it's some time or a few times but what happened was i did apply for a grant for the pennsylvania council of the arts which is great they we got a grant but there stipulation was the event had to take place by august thirty first so we had to back it up so now it's in august so it could be a little warm we don't know but it's august but it's august twenty fifth ok it's a saturday it starts at one ok and will go to eight o'clock at night and where is it it's in the williamson park stage area which is and marshall pennsylvania ok on delmore avenue dome or avenue that's right off of  right yeah and virtually it is river road and when you're in marseilles yes but so it's easy it's accessible definitely from jersey either bridge you come over it's a beautiful park i mean it's like i don't you know people for easy access parking is have sean marquis he's a student and student it were but he was a student at the bucks county community college in their jazz program ok and another connection i made over the years was the professor there john sheridan ok which and so the first few years we actually had we actually had received some money i think back around two thousand and five or six it was at the time it was called walking around money which they don't offer to  you know to legislators anymore what is that like it's a risk it was called the way i am and people would you know i guess it was if you got on the good side they throw you a few bucks i see so we had some we had some pretty good acts as you might rem but the last few years it was pretty slim pickens with the money so we i contacted john and he would have students come up which is another great thing it's their exposure to the public and how to perform and fro that is jerry zucker yes i know i just actually worked with jerry we did a rehearsal because my bass player jack hedgy has also just put some of our original tunes to big band format so we actually talk with jerry about doing some concerts know they're all very musical guests and so that's great i mean you know the whole festival you know the thing about a jazz festival is in a lot of people don't understand is it's a festival the kind of like it's not only with the music but it brings the community together and especially with jazz because the jazz is like that art form you know and why i love it so much is because you can improvise you know you're improvising right and as a musician you're able to express yourself that way so you can have that that ability to have a new audience you know and with jazz you're always kind of like reintroducing yourself anyway because when we go on the road we're always hit you know exposed to new audiences so with what you guys are going to be doing at the festival it's something that people might not have heard before it's maybe maybe right although it might not and you hope you don't that you that you can reel in some some new listeners yeah absolutely and you know the thing is it's a listening type of music jazz and it's a lot of different styles of jazz yeah i think they do you know a little bit of yes a lot of a lot of that tellings yeah and that's the beautiful thing to jazz like this huge melting pot of music and different styles you know and hopefully the weather will be great that day i mean it's outside the stages cover greatest dad that covered the musicians are always ok yeah but remember one year and it was really it was a very poor showing i mean i think we had total forty people yeah and what because it was raining and what happened was th lasted this long is a testament number one not only to you but to mike's love of jazz and the foundation and you know and hopefully people will come and donate some of their you know to some research donate money to some of the research because about like what about your background like let's talk about you have when you get into the i mean you think in general you know i did play the piano as a youngster then i was taught us and i'm actually and then i got to be too expensive and take lessons anymore but i've always i'm a good listener i love music and all of forms so you have to tell me how did you get into music well i think i've i've just always liked music i play the piano as a youngster for a few years please don't make me play it now because i'm not that good growing up and my mother would say to play by ear she was really fabulous she would just sit down and just start playing and ask her for a song and it would take a few times to find it and then when it was like what around what each would you say you were like in fourteen that they got into jazz and it's or that's hell or any music that's what it's book to them i find that really fascinating to so and a lot of the guests that i've had on musicians and just people who love love jazz i just had a jazz writer on  the last episode which was he wrote a book on jerry mole again and just people that he's not a musician per se but loves music enough and just wrote some great books on the music so you are so the festival now funding for the festival where is that coming from has that been like as of that with the challenge well i will say it's a challenge i would be fitting otherwise right but we do have a comedy show by a comedy show every winter ok sometimes it falls into the you know  march or april but some at some point in time and that's where the main money comes from and then we have of course at the at the comedy show we have about fifty fifty now  year before we took i i had run into somebody a woman from town from from not far where you lived and i said oh i have a friend who's a comedian he works up in new york maybe he would do the show for you know so we made a connection he got a few comedians and we went to a different venue ok now i made a little bit more money because i wasn't paying when you go to georgie and they definitely have these fundraisers for larger groups one hundred people right but you're giving most of the ticket portion to them ice and i get that ok so but if you have the time to find good acts you can do it yourself but then again you have to pay for the you know the location you know for so this year it just made more sense even there was going to be a little less money to go that other route the route that's great oh so now you're also always looking for sponsors you're always looks out there sponsors out there this is just a great organization if anyone is interested in sponsoring the festival where  up a blanket i have a guy delivering there and yet i'm at the park and that's right and there's nowhere to go that's all we've had that before so what's your and your basically your vision for the future of the festival you just want i would love it to would really love it to grow i would love to you know i'd love not only the the music to grow you know maybe we could make it longer but for the audience to grow to and to continue to try to introduce people to to jazz i think people have a misconception sometimes of what it really is yeah i mean we heard some people say i don't really like jazz people have you really listen to it yeah you know they just and that's a funny that you say that because i get that all the time if we get we do a concert and people inevitably come up and say you know i never really like jazz before but i like your music and it tells me that number one the way we're doing it too is we're keeping it melody based where it's something that people could follow it simply you're telling a story and then  and all of sudden you want to start their own jazz collection you know that's a good thing and that's what happens with these festivals it's great because it's something that you know people never knew existed and a lot of a lot of kids too they're just absorbed with the music we do a lot of concerts  colleges and universities and will go there and they are just absorbed in the music and then all of a sudden there is a new audience for you as well might not going to be an idea for some of the local schools the high schools to be involved and say hey come on down for you know you get a credit or something or colleges you know for coming to the festival just all these i'm always thinking of different ways right well when we had so many of the september i thought that that would be good yeah but what happened was in fact talking to john sheridan about it there the students weren't necessarily like sed school had just started so they really weren't really in into the groove yet right and then when they have it in august now which is unfortunate the schools aren't in necessarily and but i but i love the idea of the of connecting with the schools spring day i'll tell you some of the kids coming out of high schools it's scary i mean there are i mean if they have a good music program they're in a good teachers they're really doing some really good things we've we just got back from hilton head and they're having a huge festival down there with and they featuring a lot of the local high school bands and things like that so it's it's really good to see one of the things i forgot to mention that we added to this a few about five years back is i wanted to bring the arts into it so i went to the high school to see if they had any art and the art teacher there which she did is she gave me at the end of the year they asked the students to take all their artwork home and a lot of them don't so they have boxes of artwork from the high school from the from the shows and she just gives them to me and then we people ended up by well the students i guess they released it to the teachers the teacher said look nobody wants it it was actually ready for the garbage so i said well i'll take it you know and so some of them were so good that we had people there that money to buy them and i said well they're like how much i'm like well we didn't know they were really for sale but you want to throw a few bucks i'll give you an art teacher sure so that's what he did i don't really think so i think that's great yeah and it gives it gives the kids a little boost as well right this is and they've only been up and running about twenty months i think ok we're trying to i don't know if you've ever had the artist of yardley but they they've been around for a few years and it's just basically the artists that live in town they get together and they have you know juried shows and so i think they're going to show up that's great and they can do some painting although they're all that's great and all you can draw they're all they should draw that artist that they have that be really cool make a new poster for next year that's festival and it is a pretty fast i keep forgetting that you have that your street festival i mean that's like us free festival with plenty plenty of space you can bring your pop up tents we have a lot of people to do that because it can get hot and it's a great way to spend your saturday afternoon that's right and upcoming at one o'clock i want to clock and then we have the arpeggio jazz ensemble they're coming on around three thirty k and then we have the monday blues jazz orchestra which is a twenty six piece orchestra which is another episode of talking jazz will have some work great guests on here so have an awesome day god bless