On the recordSeptember 17, 2024
We are nearing 4 years since we lost a jazz great. I rise today to honor the life of one of our jazz legends and icons, Ira Sullivan. Ira was many things: a jazz great, an educator, a mentor, a father, a husband, and a friend of mine. I remember first meeting him when I was in about the seventh or eighth grade, as a student of the University of Miami Young Musicians Camp Jazz Honor Program. I remember walking in very young, and he asked me to play vibraphone to a jazz song, which was kind of weird for me. I was pretty young in my jazz education career, and I didn't know about jazz vibraphone. It almost felt as if he was asking me to play a timpani to a jazz song. It was very foreign. The next day, I came in, and he gave me a pair of Gary Burton mallets, and he told me to give it a try. Believe it or not, I was still very confused. Either way, that decision and that gift he gave me changed my life forever. From then on, I would start practicing jazz vibraphone and became quite obsessed with it. I stopped auditioning on the drum set at my school and started auditioning to be a jazz vibraphonist. Years passed. Ira would always invite me to go back to perform with him in whatever the new class was at the University of Miami for the summer camp. I got to meet all the young people from across the country who Ira had inspired and whose lives he had changed.…
