- [Announcer] Live from your public media studios, it's the State of Pennsylvania presenting the issues that affect you, your family and your region.

This is State of Pennsylvania.

(audience claps) - Good evening, everyone.

Welcome to our High Definition Theater.

Well you know, we've done hundreds of these programs, they're called State of Pennsylvania and just about every subject imaginable.

But this one may make history and it certainly is going to preserve it.

Your public TV and radio stations now own a record company and a very special place where you'll be able to hear it's music in Northeastern Pennsylvania or anywhere in our world.

That record company called Chiaroscuro is an international treasure as you're about to learn.

And it was given to WVIA for one reason that this music will be respected, celebrated and heard long after all of us are gone.

The story of Chiaroscuro is fascinating but it's really all about music.

So ladies and gentlemen, I'd like you to meet the very famous Junior Mance.

Welcome to the show.

- Thank you (audience claps) - Of course you have a real treat coming as we tell you the story of this gentleman, what an artist and what a history.

And he's the star of our panel and we'll have much more on him.

But in a few moments, let's meet the other members of our group gathered here around the WVIA Steinway.

Andrew Sordoni, known to many of you as a businessman and a philanthropist.

Let the record show it took me a career to talk him into doing an interview here but he's the donor of Chiaroscuro and we told him he needs to be here.

What do you say to that?

- Well, I'm delighted to be here particularly with my Chiaroscuro colleagues and dear friends Junior Mance.

- And now meet Hank O'Neal Hank is founder of chiaroscuro, resident of New York city and foreign Hearst in our Poconos.

He left a career in the Central Intelligence Agency and that's the CIA to pursue his boyhood passions of jazz, photography and writing.

You're about to meet the definitive Renaissance man for whom Chiaroscuro was a miss of a mission.

That was an often unsustainable mission more on that in a few moments.

Hank welcome - Thank you so very much Bill and glad to be here.

- Great to have you back again.

And John Bates, serves Chiaroscuro as Chief Engineer making quality records in studios, on ocean liners and at festivals around the world.

He's also a producer, bandleader, drummer and musical contractor.

Welcome back.

- Thanks for having me - You agree to that description?

- It sounds pretty good.

I like that.

This a big day for us gentlemen, WVIA launching a new radio station and a 24 hour, seven day a week Webstream devoted entirely to the music of Chiaroscuro and that's such a story.

And Hank, maybe I should start with you because we start at the beginning of Chiaroscuro that virtually requires us to start with you.

Give us in a nutshell what Chiaroscuro is, how it began and why it grew and where we are today.

- Well, in the late 1960s through a lot of circumstances that is too complicated to explain right now, we wound up with a small record company that was a partnership between Marian McPartland, Sherman Fairchild, and myself.

And the idea was to make records because there were hundreds, if not thousands of really remarkable artists that were being ignored at the time, usually older artists.

And if you were to look at the first Chiaroscuro recordings, you would see that the the first people that we recorded, other than say, Marian who was part of the company were Earl Hines and Willie "The Lion" Smith and Bobby Henderson, older artists from the '20s and '30s.

Due to a number of different things that happened, the company eventually merged into a partnership between Sherman Fairchild and myself and then he died suddenly.

And I wound up with a company in 1972 and continued making records along the same lines that is to look through the great artist of the past ending and the present who were playing in the mainstream up through sort of bebop who were being ignored.

I mean, when we did the first records with Earl Hines, it was the first totally solo record he had made since the '5Os.

When we made the record with Gene Krupa, it was the first one that he had done in 10 years.

And the first one Mary Lou Williams had done in 20.

And it was to devote ourselves to great artists, to needed to be heard more.

And it was a hard thing to do because records didn't sell a whole lot.

And so to make it work, I built a recording studio.

You had to have your own studio to record it because you couldn't afford to have, you know, rent others.

And one thing led to another, and it's now 2012 and there are a couple of hundred records that were made.

- And they've been given to WVIA - And everything is you're stuck.

You're in charge - For us, it's an opportunity not a challenge.

- Well, it's a great one.

It's the kind of thing that I hope translates to other stations all over the country.

Because public radio has been the primary purveyor of jazz for a long time on the airwaves.

There aren't any am stations that do this kind of thing.

And it's all about public radio playing this music.

- This was a labor of love, absolutely for you and your partner Andrew Sordoni - Exactly.

- The mission was to preserve the music and sustain the artist in many ways.

- Yeah.

- Andrew, your comments on that.

- Well, I came to Chiaroscuro first as a fan.

I bought all of the analog recordings back in the LP days.

Mostly retail in New York city which is where I could find them at the time.

And I fell in love with the company and its mission.

And then we were doing Christmas music, the jazz feeling here at WVIA and Bob Wilber suggested to me that Hank O'Neal had a reservoir of recordings including musical Christmas cards by so many wonderful artists.

And Hank came on as a guest on the show and collaborated with us.

Then for another 25 years on Christmas music, Junior appeared on the program as well.

And it was just an evolutionary thing.

And then we got ourselves into the floating jazz festival back in 1986 and the performances were extraordinary.

And I said to Hank, you should record this stuff.

And he said, I can't And this conversation happened, every time there was a great performance which was about every hour.

And he kept saying, I can't.

I said, well, why not?

He said, I don't have any money.

I said, do you have any time?

He said, I have some time.

I said, well, I don't have any time but I have a little money.

And that forged our partnership and within a year we had bought Chiaroscuro back from the second owner.

And the rest is analog to digital history.

And our colleague, John Bates transferred everything.

So we reissued not only all of the good old historical stuff and made compilation packages where they were appropriate but we issued a whole lot of good new records.

And Junior was on a whole lot of those.

- We're going to get to Jr with a melody in just a minute, but first John Bates, your most vivid memory of all your time with Chiaroscuro what stands out as a sweet moment - That I can tell here?

- Yeah.

(laughter) - One of the most interesting was my first time meeting Hank, but I can't talk about that here.

- I will later.

I have to butt in and say, one thing you have to understand about John.

He not only was the engineer and did all this but he was the Studio Manager.

He ran it for the last two or three years that we had downtown sound.

In a pinch, he could be the drummer, he could do whatever so far more than the basic description.

Go ahead.

- As far as a one particular moment, I really don't have to pinpoint one at the moment but there were so many.

When I first came to downtown sound, I was introduced to Hank through actually a guy I used to pester since I was a little kid, who was a fairly legendary Marketing Executive at Columbia Records that Hank was working with a company audio fidelity that had Chiaroscuro at the time.

Then the transition to where Andrew became involved and really allowed the company to grow exponentially.

It was all just a real blessing for me.

- I will say to you that the people that WVIA, it has not gone unnoticed for all of us that this is an absolute treasure to all three of you.

You've given a lot of your life, all your passion, your love to this and that it be given to a public radio and TV station is remarkable.

And we're privileged to have our arms around it now and do good things.

But let's bring some music in from the enormous talent at the end of the piano.

Gentlemen, Hank and Andrew where does Junior Mance fit into the Chiaroscuro picture?

And then let's hear a melody.

- Well Hank I use to talk almost every day, seven days a week at that time.

And he said, you know we've got a floating jazz festival coming up and I want to bring Junior Mance on it and can create almost like a floating jazz festival rhythm section.

And what do you think?

I said, I think that's terrific.

And he said, we can get Keytar bets from Washington and Jackie Williams from New York, and these guys are gonna do great.

And you know, I was a little skeptical.

I knew about Junior from 20 years earlier, but I didn't know about these guys performing together.

And the first time I heard them, which was just the first hit through the spectacular, through the jam sessions, through all of the recordings we made live at sea, and then going on a bi-weekly basis to hear Junior at Xeno in New York.

I fell in love not only with his music, but with his ability to be cohesive on the bandstand.

And boy, it made a Chiaroscuro sound and special presentation - Junior.

I've got to bring you into the program before you walk the keys.

What is it about Chiaroscuro that's been special to you?

- Well, besides being from that time on I've recorded for many, many companies, about 50 in all this it's always been my favorite since the first recording.

Yes.

Because we did what we wanted to do, the way we wanted to do it.

And this was the best engineer I've ever worked with.

- What does that mean?

We did what we wanted to do the way we wanted to do it.

How's that unusual?

- It's unusual because if you're playing for an audience on the ships, like we did, it's different than being in a studio with phones on and the people, you know, the battery's, off take it again.

No, it was just loose like that.

It's like we're playing it at a ball or something.

That feeling has been with me every sense from the Chiaroscuro .

Yes.

- You see Bill, the idea was that the musician knew best.

I didn't have the nerve or wouldn't even consider to tell Earl Hines or Junior Mance what to do.

They know what to do.

They play the piano and they play it magnificently or Bobby Hackett, I mean, you just don't do that.

And a lot of people do.

And I learned that sort of from a guy named John Hammond who was a very passive producer.

He didn't tell Billie Holiday, he'd say, here's some songs but he didn't tell her what to do with it.

And that was the idea, you wouldn't tell Junior Mance how to play on.

- Would you play some magnificent music for us and tell us what it is you're going to play?

- The first tune I ever wrote, the time limit speaks well of this gathering and of my feeling for the company.

It's called Jubilation.

- Go right ahead.

(mellow tone piano playing) (audience claps) - Just like going to church.

(Applause by the audience) - Junior we had an editorial remark over here from Andrew Sordoni when that ended, what was that?

- I said, just like going to church.

(laughter) - Nearly 50 years ago, I fell in love with that composition.

I've mentioned it to Junior almost every time we've been together and on our first recording in a studio up at the Rudy Van Gelder's, I brought my old high school roommate who had the first record of Jubilation many years ago and we listened to it the night before we went up to the studio, and Junior you're still a treasure.

And of course, we've heard this too many times and it just gets better and better.

You started playing the piano at age of five, right?

Born in Chicago?

- Yeah, born in Chicago.

I started playing the piano at five, not really playing piano.

- Essentially you started professionally playing the piano at what like 12 or 13, something like that?

- Somewhere between 10 and 13 will make sense.

It occurred when Junior was 10 It was (audience laughing) This gift means a lot to WVIA, we hope it means a lot to the world of jazz.

It's such a wonderful as we hope all of you will learn in the next few minutes.

But speaking on behalf of WVIA, Chairman of our board, Dr. Harbor Britain - Thank you, Bill.

And that is a great jubilation.

And I was going to say Andrew if this is like going to church, we should pass the plate.

(laughter from the audience) But it's wonderful to be in the Sordoni Theater to thank you again for your generosity and giving this great music to us.

- Thank you - And it makes this wonderful music available to hundreds of thousands of people in Northeast, Pennsylvania but through WVIA to the rest of the world.

My question to you is, do you remember a moment in your life when jazz really grabbed a hold of you and said, this is something that I have to do because there are many of us that love jazz, there are many of us that actually go to the concerts but there are very few of us that buy a record company and start to produce the music.

What was it in your life that changed everything for you and led you down this path?

- I realized that I would never be a professional musician and certainly not at the level that I aspire to by listening.

And so when you're an enabler, you listen differently and it was a gradual and an evolutionary thing but it grew and grew, and I've still listened carefully every day to jazz music.

And I revere jazz musicians in my life and whether it's social or professional - And Junior we should now give you the opportunity to answer the same question.

What brought you to music?

How did you know at five that you had that gift, that curiosity?

- Well, it was hard to say it was during the depression and that father and mother moved to a flat up over on the second floor of a house where the owners or whoever lived there left this old beat up upright.

And my father taught himself how to play, never professionally but he could play stride piano.

You know, like Willie "The Lion" Smith and those people Denise, P. Johnson that's as far as he got but he never turned professional.

But while he was at work every day, you know, here I am about that tall, you know I was at the keyboard standing up, of course, you know, just playing with two fingers.

And one day he came home from work, he was a closest person.

He came home from work early and I didn't hear him come in.

And he heard me doing this at five years old.

So I turned around and blurted out, dad, I want to learn how to play this, get it?

And he almost fainted because at five-year-old I said to the father, I want to learn how to play the piano.

I did, you know, but he let it ride for, I was like actually, probably too young for a real teacher.

So he didn't send me to a teacher until I was about eight years old.

And then that's when I just took off.

And I started listening to the same people that he listened to, all the famous piano players.

They're all hides who lived in Chicago, people like that you know?

So one Christmas they asked me, what do you want for Christmas?

I said, well, I'd like a little table radio cause they had one.

But then, bands used to broadcast at night like 15 minutes here, 15 minutes at another club.

This is before jazz recording was really big.

And I used to hear him, you know?

And so when they asked me what I wanted for Christmas, I say, I want a little radio.

Again, they almost fainted, you know, cause kids, you know, you ask for things like electric train and all of that, you know, but I wanted to, I dunno music just hit me.

- It's something we've all noticed.

By the way the audience, ladies and gentlemen is overwhelmingly the WVIA staff.

We have some board members and some VIP's and special friends here as part of this program.

But I want you to know it's not lost on any of us.

The history of Chiaroscuro is one of reverence for people like you who have this gift.

Part of the story also is that America has not embraced this music or wonderful people like you historically, it's not really been appreciated and respected as it should be.

You agree?

- I agree, it hasn't parts but not like Chiaroscuro, as I mentioned earlier, this is my favorite record company.

And I've done so many, I had so many wonderful recording sessions especially on the cruises and everything that helps us spread the music around too.

But I mean, they've just done everything possible.

- Is the music appreciated more in other countries than in America?

- Some.

And I've been to just about every country there is.

Some it's more important than here.

Yeah.

Japan we tackled with every year, about twice a year.

- The reason I'm talking about this is we at WVIA just learned moments before this program was being taped that a foundation in the area that chooses to remain anonymous has made an extraordinarily generous gift so that we here can embrace and promote this remarkable music.

And that can mean by bringing folks like you if you're available and interested to universities in the area where music students can learn to love the music as we do.

So we're very grateful to that foundation which chooses to remain anonymous - Away ahead of you.

Last year, I did a college tour of dis-concerts at night and what I'd call artists, you know, the artists meets with the students in the daytime and I still did masterclass.

Yeah.

And I still do those, yeah.

I think it's wonderful.

I just finished teaching for 16 years at The New School University in the jazz department.

- To the new school in New York city?

- Yes.

And they have a jazz department.

- Yeah.

You helped to build it as I remember.

- Hank is a member of the board there.

- Hank you want to speak about The New School?

You've been a part of it too from the beginning.

- Well, yes.

I started at The New School in the late 1960s strangely enough in both the dance department and building them and audio engineering department.

But in 1985, there was a movement of foot to start a program in jazz and contemporary music.

And some programs were written and ideas were kicked around and faculty was approached and it's now 25, 26 years after that time.

And we now have what I think about 280 students at any given time, we graduate at 70, 75 a year.

Junior has been teaching for the last almost two decades still has private students from there, you know.

And I was telling him when we were coming out here today.

One of the best things that I've heard in a while was a student recital, Reggie Workman student recital at The New School in December with nine students playing John Coltrane music.

It was just absolutely wonderful.

It's a great program.

- I should point out people usually tune in on the half hour.

We'd like you to know what you're watching is a special, very special State of Pennsylvania Program devoted to announcing to you if you will the beginning of something very unusual.

WVIA was given the gift of a record company called chiaroscuro Records based in New York city.

And the people around the table have been intimately involved in developing it and growing it.

And now the ball passes to WVIA and we're so excited about it.

But we want you to know the history and how it happened and why you should care.

And we think we'll be able to do that in the moments ahead.

Let's go back to our theater audience.

Of all the people in WVIA FM, our radio station, closest to jazz music.

Certainly George Graham is on the top of that list and he's in the audience and he played a big part in this new radio station.

Our WVIA HD3 radio station and worldwide web stream called the chiaroscuro Channel.

And here's George Graham - Well, thank you.

And this is a very exciting thing to have happen.

I've been doing radio for 30, some odd years doing jazz radio here at WVIA and before that in college.

And I've always been on the receiving end of jazz releases.

And the record business has been a kind of, a sort of a mysterious thing.

You know, I've to speak with record promoters and so on.

And now here we are at WVIA kind of intimately involved with it and starting to think about the sort of details of running a record company and the marketing and the sales and that sort of thing.

And one of the things that we're pretty excited about is this launching of this 24 hour web stream where people all over the world can pick up the station and pick up the music and listen to it and find out about it and go to the website and avail themselves of it.

But I'd like to ask Hank and Andrew and John, I know you take a lot of pride in many of the releases that have come out and you know, some of the ones that are really exciting and then you wonder about the sales figures and very often you can see.

I just, from my own experience that the the records that you think may be just spectacular kind of languish sales wise.

Are there some that you can think of in particular that Chiaroscuro has released that you'd take particular pride in and for some reason or another just didn't really catch fire as far as sales are concerned.

- Hank you want to answer that one?

- Well, there were many that fell into that category because quite often, just because it's good doesn't mean anybody's going to pick up on it.

The Chiaroscuro that probably had the greatest number of sales had the greatest number of sales simply because it was mentioned for 10 minutes on the CBS Sunday morning show.

And that made a great big difference or another one that was a fine record got a review on the back pages of Playboy.

And that turned that into a good selling record.

But some of my very favorites are ones like, one that I made in about 1970 by a man named Bobby Henderson.

He probably sold less than a thousand pieces because nobody knew who he was and they still don't.

And it's probably as good a piano record as ever came out on the label.

- Thank you, George.

Let me follow up on your question though.

What's a good selling record?

Give us the number.

How many CDs are sold for it to be in Hank O'Neil's opinion a hit in the Chiaroscuro world?

- Well, the most that any I think ever sold was about 20,000 pieces and that was the Stacey Kent record.

- Which we licensed.

And what year was that?

And was that over time?

- No, it's sold, We only licensed it for about three years.

I think it was in the late '90s.

It would have been when John?

- I'm thinking '98, '99.

- This is a record business story.

I mean, a friend of mine named Alan Bates in London said I've got this wonderful record coming out.

I've got to get it out in the United States.

It's nobody you ever heard of, but Hank it's great and would you please do me a favor?

And I said, fine, Alan.

And we licensed it from him.

And Stacy Kent is a wonderful vocalist, still is a wonderful vocalist selling lots of records and this was more or less her first record.

She got a spot on the CBS Sunday morning show and it went from absolutely zero to number two on Amazon's list in two days.

That's what it takes.

But for an ordinary record, an ordinary straight ahead swing like record by Summit Reunion or something like that.

There were, I think John, you would know better than I but there were three or four that got close to 10,000 or 11,000 units.

But the average, the average record was in the, you know, mid threes or something like that.

- I've been told it can cost a fortune to promote a record.

- That's right.

It can cost a fortune to promote a record but you have to have something that's promotable.

And in the United States in 2012, or in 1990 when we started putting out most of the CDs, I would tell people if I had a budget and could buy 53 billboards on Santa Monica Boulevard in Los Angeles it's not going to make a great deal of difference because the kind of thing that the average person, the average person wants to hear Beyonce or Adele.

They don't want to hear, - And on that subject, I've read in your history whoever wrote the biography fads never mattered in the list to you folks from Chiaroscuro, not in the list.

In fact, one of the true tests of Chiaroscuro now and 100, some years from now will be that it stands the test of time.

It'll be as cherished 100, 200 years from now as it is now by probably the same demographic which isn't huge, but there will be people who will love it.

No fads - Junior Mance's will sound just as good in a hundred years as he does today.

(laughter from the audience) It's that simple.

- I want to say one thing that made me fall in love with Chiaroscuro, we never had to rehearse what we were going to do.

Like especially on the cruise as we go out there, they put three of us together.

Some of us never played together but the feeling was there and a lot of those records became good hits, big hits.

- Now in the show we're going to be, I'm sorry, go ahead.

- Junior makes it the point about the cruises.

And the fact that Hank produced the floating jazz festival gave us a venue where we could bring some of the finest artists in the world, artists that perhaps we couldn't afford to record in New York or Los Angeles or anywhere else.

And they would be there for a week performing and John Bates and Hank and others who assisted us learned how to record while the ship was underway with all the vibrations.

And occasionally Cheryl, a waiter would drop a tray, a drink so you'd lose a magical moment.

But we could do it again the next night.

And those records, a couple of dozen of them will stand the test of time in that venue.

And I hope that you listen carefully and that our audience listens carefully to the difference between a studio sound and a live sound.

And then the spontaneity and how many times guests were on the ship.

And they said, can I sit in with Junior?

And we'd say, yeah, you can sit in with Junior but we're going to record it and see how it works out.

Right, John?

- I mean, no one was involved for monetary gain in any part of it.

Then it's obviously not pop music.

Hopefully it will sell for many years and over time there'll be, you know, some worthwhile sales but not that anybody at any given moment is going to really realize.

And it's kind of interesting one of the best infusions of capital, if you will that we got in, I guess the late '90s came because Erykah Badu decided to sample one of the Chiaroscuro recordings for her hit, Didn't you know which probably sold at least hundreds of thousands if not millions and I happened to hear it.

And they didn't just subtly sample the track, they stole it.

The whole thing.

So I contacted Universal, her label.

And they were like, oh, this couldn't be.

And we sent them exactly what the original recording was.

Anyway, they had a producer who apparently told her that he had somehow written this.

And so we were able to make a settlement with them which also gave us the opportunity just to go back a second where you said, I have a personal interest or there's one personal story about a recording that didn't do particularly well that I had hoped would, but it gave us the opportunity.

Michael Brecker was a Universal artist and we were able to work out an arrangement for him to record on a record that we call Reunion which was actually a 25 year reunion of a recording we did led by Jack Wilkins the guitar player that had Michael and Randy Brecker and Jack DeJohnette and Eddie Gomez on the original recording.

And in any event, we were able to negotiate with Universal to use them and get some capital from that.

My point just being that it's not that people aren't influenced much more than they realized by a lot of the music that we recorded.

And many, many times, if you look at the people producing a lot of pop music, they often refer to specifically Chiaroscuro and certain artists and certain music that they were influenced by.

So somehow it doesn't translate to money in the pockets of people that might be.

- Right.

You've made it very clear nobody was in this for the money, you really have.

But I should point out you can really tell we're a non-commercial station.

So we want you to call before midnight.

(laughter from the audience) We have the whole library of all these CDs and you can buy them from us by going to our website, wvia.org Now you can hear the entire Chiaroscuro library all I think, 13 or 1400 selections playing around the clock 24 hours a day, seven days a week wherever you are in the world on wvu.org by clicking on the Chiaroscuro channel.

Or if you're in this area and you have an HD radio you'll find this wonderful music on HD3.

What would you like to play for us?

And then I'm going to introduce you to, I'm going to do that first.

We have a meme, stride, piano player in the audience.

His name is Nick Knowles.

He's a member of our board.

Quick question, if you would, Nick.

- Yeah, my question is you're a terrific soloist and a leader and a dynamic one.

Your music is hugely exciting.

You're also one of the great backers of great singers like Dinah Washington, it's nearly a different way of playing to be a soloist.

And many people are only soloist, are only good sidemen but you're both.

And I thought you might comment on how you do that.

- Well, when you think about it, it's easy.

Just one thing, do you remember?

Don't get in the way of the soloists.

Yeah.

- Or you gonna be the soloist.

(laughter) - Well, (Junior laughs) - Solo piano, solo piano actually.

- I'd like to tell a story, it's a short story before I do that about, you know, Johnny Mandel the famous composer who wrote Emily.

On one of our cruises, I just happened to play Emily.

And during the intermission, this guy runs up out of the audience.

It describes, he grabbed both shoulders and starts shaking and he says, thank you for playing the tool the way that I wrote it.

And I had no idea that he even wrote it, you know?

And then when I thought about it like everybody, most of the musicians played it too fast and that's a slow ballad, you know?

And that stuck with me forever.

And Johnny Mandel is still one of my favorite composers.

- Nick, should we ask you a good Junior to play that?

Would you play Emily for us?

- Yeah - All right, now?

- Yes.

- Okay.

(slow ballad piano playing) (slow ballad piano playing) (applause by the audience) - Thank you.

Thank you - Junior I'm looking here at JazzTimes Magazine, This Month's Issue.

And it says here Junior Mance keeps rolling along like he has discovered the fountain of youth.

You just celebrated your 60th birthday, I understand?

Not quite 80, oh, wait a minute.

- Oh, what was it?

- 83rd birthday.

- 83rd?

- Yeah.

- Fountain of youth.

(audience clapping in applause) - And it also says, here tells the story.

You were surprised that I knew this but in the same article, it mentions that you and your wife both agreed to purchase in lieu of an extravagant honeymoon, your Steinway piano.

- Yes we did.

- So this is very familiar to you?

- Yeah.

It's very true.

- The time is flying by.

Let's have another piece, another melody.

What would you like to play for us?

Oh, ah, I don't know.

Let's see.

(mellow jazz tone piano playing) (audience clapping in applause) Thank you.Thank you.

(audience clapping in applause) Thank you.

Thank you - I'd like you to meet Erika Funke from our radio station.

She knows music.

Erika - Oh, thank you.

Thank you Junior for that so much.

What a range!

And I think what I would want to say now is just to amplify what we've experienced so far here in in this wonderful occasions, wonderful event.

I was really struck by Hank O'Neil's assay in a jazz journal called Brilliant Corners.

In which he talked about giving as gifts kind of a get well gesture to William F. Buckley and Whitney Bally, little packages of these Chiaroscuro jazz releases.

And I thought, well, that's a lovely, friendly thing.

But then I got to thinking about what it is that distinguishes Chiaroscuro recordings?

There's a fullness to the sound and I don't mean just what you do wonderfully John with the acoustic range and the acoustical space, but the sense of, and I think you've said it so well Junior and Hank and Andrew and John.

The idea that these two producers, Hank and Andrew, Andrew and Hank create a space for you as musicians where you're respected in all of your masterly talent and creative abilities.

But also if you got out of bed on the wrong side or you had a Tiff with your loved one perhaps.

That whole range of what it means to be human and then you bring that as a musician to the recording.

And because they respect that, that fullness of your humanity.

And as you suggested, you could do what you wanted and Hank, as you suggested you respect the musicians.

That has to do with health and our health.

The word, the old English word, Hal, the root of health meaning whole.

So I just think that we are privileged to inherit this wonderful company, this wonderful music that you all make in your fullness of and humanity.

Just the sensuality we just heard there with summertime and the yearning we heard with Emily and the joy with jubilation it's that range of human experience and emotion that we are at charged with stewarding.

And it's a privilege and a kind of a scary honor to have this.

But to put it out and to amplify, which is what we do here in radio and now on the web, amplify this.

So I just think it's a privilege and a treasure to have you here and all of you and thank you so much for entrusting us with with this wonderful human experience.

(audience clapping in applause) - The reason for that, recording for these guys, they don't tell you what to do.

They trust your own feelings.

And that's what it is, what I've played for them, you don't record for them.

It's how I feel about what I'm playing and it's always a good feeling.

- Let me point out first of all, Junior, this is in the notes that being inducted into the American Jazz Hall of Fame was one of the great moments of your life.

- Well, it's always a great moment to know that you're being thought of.

- And I should point out too that Chiaroscuro, more than half of the inductees into that, American Jazz Hall of Fame have recorded for Chiaroscuro Records.

That's remarkable, quite an honor, and a scary one at that as Erika mentioned.

- Yeah, some great musicians, too?

- Sir, if you would introduce yourself?

- I'm Kin from Clark Summit and I've been a jazz fan for many, many years.

Most of my favorite music comes from the, or musicians comes from '30s and '40s.

And my question, I guess, would be I discovered the record company when I was searching for Bobby Hackett.

And that was some of the first stuff I bought.

And then I stumbled on Woody Herman's main man and the first turn Flip Phillips and I was really hooked.

And I was wondering, how do you guys get some of these, somehow retired guys back to the recording studio like Bobby Hackett living up in wealth or Chat at Cape Code.

How did you get them off the Cape to come down and do these things?

- Well, Junior made the right remark you asked them.

But in the case of Bobby Hackett, Bobby was actually playing a six week, seven week run at the Roosevelt Grill.

I actually went to that to hear it the first night with Eddie Condon.

And we had a listen and I said, my God, this is a great band.

It was Vic Dickinson and Dave McKenna.

And I said, we got to record this band and didn't have a record company particularly, but went and talked to Bobby.

And I said, Bobby, this is a great band.

Is anybody doing it?

And no, nobody was nobody cared and that was the idea of Chiaroscuro.

Nobody cared about these people then.

And if you can imagine five musicians, Cliff Lehman, Jack Glassberg, Dave McKenna, Vic Dickinson and Bobby Hackett, people at the top of their game and no one cared.

And I said, Bobby, what would you like to do?

And I borrowed equipment from Sherman Fairchild, microphones and so forth and we just did it.

We had no idea what was going to happen with it.

Ultimately it came out with records and everybody got paid and things like that.

But it was just a speculation labor of love.

And you just say, Bobby, would you like to do it?

And of course cause nobody else was asking them, it's that simple.

- We gotta wrap up, beg, pardon me.

But we only have a couple of minutes left.

I'm going to give you the last word.

Andrew Sordoni.

Hank O'Neil thank you for the many, many years you've been such an important part of WVIA.

John Bates, We've been friends for a long time.

Junior, it is such a privilege to have you here.

And we're going to have you take us out with a couple of minutes of some of your magnificent music.

What do you want to see happen to Chiaroscuro Andrew Sardoni?

- I want it to endure.

And the stewardship at WVIA makes that a likelihood.

And the work of my colleagues, the Chiaroscuro colleagues and all the great artists deserves to endure.

And so the archival mission is as important as the everyday mission of just enjoying the music and getting with it.

Who couldn't be uplifted by listening to summertime with this interpretation, one of a kind.

Junior will never play it again exactly the way he played it for us today.

And it's a treasure and we have him.

- Junior Would you take us out of the program and thank you so much.

- Welcome (audience clapping in applause) (mellow jazz tone piano playing) (audience clapping in applause) (soft upbeat jazz music)