My whole history begins with the fact that I was born into a musical family. My father was a musician and educator, my mother sang. My father taught music and rehearsed his band in our house on Saturdays, people like Red Tyler and Clarence Ford, Wardell Quezergue, a lot of those cats came out of our living room. As a boy I would watch 35 musicians patting their feet and playing the Big Band music my father was doing. It was exciting to me. So I tend to view NOCCA as my living room.
-Clyde Kerr, Jr.
Director of Jazz Department at New Orleans Center for the Creative Arts
I am standing in the hallways of the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts (original version, Perrier Street with the peeling paint), outside the utilitarian “music performance room,” the main feature of which is a large painting of Louis Armstrong, who appropriately watches over the proceedings. It’s a Thursday in the late afternoon and I can’t help but sense a certain buzz pervading the place. And while there is an air of seriousness, as though important things are going on, there is a stronger, almost giddy sense of excitement. Ballet students run past and diminutive young men carrying instrument cases that seem ridiculously large seep in from all directions, and file past me. A jazz quartet is running through a number inside the room and a gravelly voice shouts encouragement. I crane my neck and take a look in. Clyde Kerr, Jr., is seated casually, his head, with its tuft of grey-black hair knotted on the back, moves gently along with the tempo. His trumpet is lying across his lap as he intently listens and observes his young charges. He takes up the trumpet in one hand, leans back in his chair and momentarily plays along, looking relaxed and cool. When the song is over he discusses some fine point in the song and his students hang on every word in a rapt silence. Kerr has been doing this, teaching music, for thirty-five years.
A lot of the teachers around town take the approach of “Learn this on your horn” and that’s it. Mr. Kerr, he’s a real spiritual person, you can grow musically without even playing by just being around him, by just talking to him. He has a lot of wisdom. It’s really eerie that you can learn how to play your horn better by not even talking about your horn, just by listening to him talk, just teaching you things about life.
-Saxophonist Devon Phillips,
Fourth year NOCCA Student
Now Kerr is holding court with the students. He has a breezy manner and speaks in the voice one might expect from a trumpeter from New Orleans, gravelly and hep. The conversation switches from music to musicians and more. He seems amazingly accessible.
I am going to talk to Christian Scott, a trumpeter, about Kerr, but at the moment he is talking to Ronald Benko, his classical music instructor, about a possible career setback (the students are required, whatever their interest, to have instruction in the foundations of the classical form). It seems that some impending dental work could cause trouble for the young horn player. Momentarily the conversation seems slightly odd, all of this talk of a “career setback” to a young man of such tender age. Then I’m reminded, as yet another aspiring ballet dancer passes by, of NOCCA’s mission as a pre-professional arts training school. Further reflection transports me to February of 1999, and this same Christian Scott holding his own on stage with his uncle, Donald Harrison, Jr. (also NOCCA grad), and the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra. I’m specifically reminded of the young man’s poise. In the next few hours at NOCCA with Clyde Kerr, I will discover the derivation of that poise.
He’s like a father to a lot of us. With me, its a real father/son type relationship. You should never take what he says for granted because he knows everything. Six times out of ten he’ll be tough, making sure you nail the changes, and the other times he lays back to see what you do on your own.
-Christian Scott
The performance class is an interesting exercise. It gathers students from all of the various music disciplines within NOCCA (classical, vocal and jazz) to critique each other’s work. Prior to performing the students give a bit of commentary on the upcoming selection. There is perfect silence throughout. When a performance concludes, the performers ask for questions and comments. The comments are frank: “You really have to stop being nervous because I was watching your right hand and it was shaking so much the chords were indistinct.” Or full of a sort of backhanded encouragement: “That was a lot better than last time.” The music faculty, including classical composer Steve Dankner, make comments, both critical and motivating, but for the most part they “lay back” and let the kids hash it out by themselves. It was quite impressive to watch these teenage kids operating on such a high level, with such discipline and maturity.
I love it here. I’ve been here for four years and I got to know and play with a lot of the guys who are great musicians. I actually got to go here with them and I learned so much. Steve Walker, Eric Fletcher, he’s with Terence Blanchard now, and James Alsanders. And of course playing with Mr. Kerr, and you know he’s played with everybody. Has he ever told you who he has played with?
-Devon Phillips
I’m sitting down at Mr. Kerr’s desk; it’s littered with music books and pieces of stray manuscript paper, and I wanted to talk about his career as a musician but it seemed almost unimportant to him, secondary. In the music business there are legions of guys who will go on and on about every session they ever made, the bigger the name the more reflective glory, but Kerr sketched it out for me in a few sentences.
“I made most of the R&B dates and funk dates in the ’60s and ’70s, a lot of the Sea-Saint stuff for Toussaint, if there’s a horn on it I’m usually there, stuff like ‘Hey Pocky Way’ and ‘They All Asked for You.’ I was very lucky.”
But the answer soon transformed into a discussion of the philosophy he brought to NOCCA thirteen years ago. “I got to play with all different musicians, and all different types of music. And I always went on the bandstand with the attitude of ‘what can I learn tonight.’ No matter what type of music I was playing I was always concentrating on my instrument and trying to play correctly. I always tell my students, wherever you are whatever you do, it’s what you make of that moment. When I got out there as a professional musician, all of those guys that I had been around as a youngster, Red Tyler, Clarence Ford, all those guys, they put me in the right direction and let me know what I needed to do, they encouraged me. That’s what I am trying to do here, trying to give that all back to these youngsters. It’s such a significant part of my life and I learn a lot from my students. It’s a wonderful thing to give out information to them and take it and they bring it back to you and you can hear it evolving within them.”
NOCCA’s mission is to prepare students in the various Arts disciplines—Music, Dance, Theater, Creative Writing and Visual Arts—for careers in that field. To be a professional, and the implications of that career path, is a constant theme in Kerr’s conversation.
“I know that all of these kids will not become professional musicians, but I teach them all as if they are and I expect their best. I’m always preaching to these kids about what it is to be a professional musician, some of them come here and have no idea. They come and they’re saying ‘I want to play jazz’, but they have no idea what it is all about so I’m constantly trying to paint the picture of what it takes, and what’s involved. I let them know it’s not easy, you have to play, nobody can do it for you. It’s a wonderful gift that I have, it feeds me, and I want to give it to my kids. It took me awhile to realize how to approach teaching this music.
“But I developed a style that’s a mixture of history, and music all mixed up together, it’s a conversation, and the kids seem to respect it.”
As I listen to Kerr as he relates his teaching style and approach, I’m thinking of all of the things his students told me about him and the program. And it becomes obvious that he does a stunning job of translating and instilling his experiences and philosophies to his students. And it’s no surprise that so many NOCCA students, Nicholas Payton, Adonis Rose, Irvin Mayfield and the legions of others, find success.
There’s a guy who lives in the same building as I do, a guitarist named Todd Duke. Musicians I know speak highly of him, and he gets a lot of work. I found out recently that he grew up in Slidell, so on a lark I asked if he went to NOCCA.
It turns out that he indeed did, attending the school in 1988 and ’89. “What about Clyde Kerr?” I asked. “Clyde Kerr?” he repeated, smiling and shaking his head, “he changed my life.”
