Concord - city of jazz

[ironlips]

You are correct about a connection. It was Jefferson who suggested to his friend Seawright that the corps look into the music of Chuck Mangione, whom Carl had booked for the Concord Jazz Festival.

The Blue Devils had already been involved in the Concord Summer Festival even before the Pavilion was built, at the instigation of Jefferson, who was a major supporter of the corps.

As for State of the Art, I was staff producer for Concord Jazz Records at the time, and a former BD and current SCV instructor, and approached DCI's Dan Pescione about the notion of doing the first ever multi-track drum corps recording. There was considerable resistance on the part of the organization resulting from the misplaced fear that this project would negatively impact sales of the finals LPs. Fortunately, Royer and Seawright convinced the board and we made the recording.

The whole thing was a natural. SCV was the state of the art in drumming, and Concord in brass. The record was featured on the local classical and jazz radio stations in San Francisco and San Jose.