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“I said this was Fat Tuesday, not lazy Tuesday.” JP (short for Jean Paul) Balmat, the music director at Mission Bay High School laughs, but he is listening. His star pupils, the Preservationists, a NOLA-style jazz group are running down a song in the band room.
To a casual listener they are startlingly accomplished. But Balmat hears something. He brandishes a clarinet. He wants the drums on the brushes to stir the pot as he puts it, and he wants more dynamics.
“Think about the build,” he says, “and the collapse.” He demonstrates what he wants with his clarinet and then he counts it off. The students attack the line.
In April, this is the group that Balmat wants to take to New Orleans.
“We’ve been invited to play at Preservation Hall and open for the Preservation Hall Jazz Band.” But that takes money, he says, which becomes an issue for a cash-strapped school district. Propped against a wall in the band classroom, next to an old blond upright piano, is a plastic sign board:
“Please Help the Mission Bay Preservationists Take Their Music to New Orleans.” It has a cartoon thermometer marked off in ascending dollar amounts: $14,000 at the top, $0 at the bottom. The thermometer’s red line presently rests at just under $3,000 dollars.
NOLA, meaning authentic New Orleans-Louisiana jazz is certainly not cool by any high schooler’s standards. In contrast to hiphop, r&b, trance, metal, or whatever the second line hip factor among teens is about zero.
But if that bothers any of the dozen instrumentalists and two vocalists in this group, it doesn’t show. They play each note with heat, like they mean it.
Brandon Cerquedo, 18, is the group's guitarist/banjoist. He thinks music in general and membership in the Preservationists helped turn his life around. “I was trouble,” he says. “In middle school, I was really bad.” Cerquedo lives in City Heights, is bussed to Mission Bay high each day.
“When I was a freshman my mom got me in the music program.” He wanted to play guitar, but his mom wouldn’t allow it. They settled on flute.
But flute or not, Cerquedo bit. He practiced, and he brought up his grades. His mom finally relented and hooked him up with a guitar, an electric.
“I started playing rock. But then, I heard blues, BB King, Robert Johnson, Muddy Waters. From blues, I ended up liking jazz even more.” And that, he says, really changed his life. He keeps an A and B grade average now.
“I won’t let him play in the band without passing grades,” Balmat says.
Mission Bay high may be Frank Zappa’s Alma mater (the same can be said for Warped Tour faves Pierce the Veil,) but the music program here has a jazz history that goes back twenty years or more. Balmat, a Pacific Beach native and jazz saxist in the Euphoria Jazz Band is himself a Buccaneer.
He went through the music program at San Diego State University and came back to Mission Bay with a mission: to make this the hub of jazz in California.
“The cool thing is that even though we play traditional jazz we also play a lot of student compositions. We adapt to our backgrounds. We’ve got six different nationalities in the Preservationists. We’re a melting pot, just like New Orleans.”
Balmat explains that Mission Bay High is a magnet school. “80 percent of our students are bussed in.” Most, he says, are from low income households.
They have a CD planned for release in March, the first Balmat says under the Preservationists name. He says they get out and play at least 40 events a year. “This is the only youth band doing traditional New Orleans music in Southern California.”
The Preservationists launched a Kickstarter campaign to help pay for the trip. “Kickstarter,” reads the band page “is an all or nothing campaign. If we don't reach our goal we don't receive the funds.
All funds raised will go towards travel expenses, hotel costs, instrument rentals, transportation in New Orleans, and food: we gotta eat!” Total cost is estimated to be $12,000 but the Preservationists have set their initial goal for half that - $6,000.
As of this writing, nine backers have pledged $1,036 toward the goal with 45 days remaining on the funding drive. “We’re going,” Balmat says as if to not go is unthinkable. “The school is also looking for some funding sources. Yeah. We’re going.”
“I said this was Fat Tuesday, not lazy Tuesday.” JP (short for Jean Paul) Balmat, the music director at Mission Bay High School laughs, but he is listening. His star pupils, the Preservationists, a NOLA-style jazz group are running down a song in the band room.
To a casual listener they are startlingly accomplished. But Balmat hears something. He brandishes a clarinet. He wants the drums on the brushes to stir the pot as he puts it, and he wants more dynamics.
“Think about the build,” he says, “and the collapse.” He demonstrates what he wants with his clarinet and then he counts it off. The students attack the line.
In April, this is the group that Balmat wants to take to New Orleans.
“We’ve been invited to play at Preservation Hall and open for the Preservation Hall Jazz Band.” But that takes money, he says, which becomes an issue for a cash-strapped school district. Propped against a wall in the band classroom, next to an old blond upright piano, is a plastic sign board:
“Please Help the Mission Bay Preservationists Take Their Music to New Orleans.” It has a cartoon thermometer marked off in ascending dollar amounts: $14,000 at the top, $0 at the bottom. The thermometer’s red line presently rests at just under $3,000 dollars.
NOLA, meaning authentic New Orleans-Louisiana jazz is certainly not cool by any high schooler’s standards. In contrast to hiphop, r&b, trance, metal, or whatever the second line hip factor among teens is about zero.
But if that bothers any of the dozen instrumentalists and two vocalists in this group, it doesn’t show. They play each note with heat, like they mean it.
Brandon Cerquedo, 18, is the group's guitarist/banjoist. He thinks music in general and membership in the Preservationists helped turn his life around. “I was trouble,” he says. “In middle school, I was really bad.” Cerquedo lives in City Heights, is bussed to Mission Bay high each day.
“When I was a freshman my mom got me in the music program.” He wanted to play guitar, but his mom wouldn’t allow it. They settled on flute.
But flute or not, Cerquedo bit. He practiced, and he brought up his grades. His mom finally relented and hooked him up with a guitar, an electric.
“I started playing rock. But then, I heard blues, BB King, Robert Johnson, Muddy Waters. From blues, I ended up liking jazz even more.” And that, he says, really changed his life. He keeps an A and B grade average now.
“I won’t let him play in the band without passing grades,” Balmat says.
Mission Bay high may be Frank Zappa’s Alma mater (the same can be said for Warped Tour faves Pierce the Veil,) but the music program here has a jazz history that goes back twenty years or more. Balmat, a Pacific Beach native and jazz saxist in the Euphoria Jazz Band is himself a Buccaneer.
He went through the music program at San Diego State University and came back to Mission Bay with a mission: to make this the hub of jazz in California.
“The cool thing is that even though we play traditional jazz we also play a lot of student compositions. We adapt to our backgrounds. We’ve got six different nationalities in the Preservationists. We’re a melting pot, just like New Orleans.”
Balmat explains that Mission Bay High is a magnet school. “80 percent of our students are bussed in.” Most, he says, are from low income households.
They have a CD planned for release in March, the first Balmat says under the Preservationists name. He says they get out and play at least 40 events a year. “This is the only youth band doing traditional New Orleans music in Southern California.”
The Preservationists launched a Kickstarter campaign to help pay for the trip. “Kickstarter,” reads the band page “is an all or nothing campaign. If we don't reach our goal we don't receive the funds.
All funds raised will go towards travel expenses, hotel costs, instrument rentals, transportation in New Orleans, and food: we gotta eat!” Total cost is estimated to be $12,000 but the Preservationists have set their initial goal for half that - $6,000.
As of this writing, nine backers have pledged $1,036 toward the goal with 45 days remaining on the funding drive. “We’re going,” Balmat says as if to not go is unthinkable. “The school is also looking for some funding sources. Yeah. We’re going.”