43
Concert series wraps up
By jeanne starmack
youngstown
In the city park below the Mahoning Avenue Bridge on Sunday afternoon, people were beginning to gather.
Grills were going. People were laughing. Music was starting, then stopping for soundchecks under the big white tent beside the Mahoning River.
Al Robinson strolled through the small but growing group of picnickers and across the sidewalk near the B&O Station to meet up with Jeff Green, his partner in producing the eight-week summer concert series called Jazz in the Park Youngstown.
Occasionally, Robinson glanced up. It was cloudy, but so far, the rain was holding off.
It needed to stay away for only four more hours. Then the concert series would be over for another year — its 22nd.
Robinson and Green have been involved with it from the beginning, along with Green’s sister-in-law, Karen, and his brother, Michael, who died in 2001.
One of the city’s best assets, they say, the concert series draws from 800 to 1,000 people to the park on Sunday afternoons, though there’s never any such thing as too crowded — “The more the merrier,” said Robinson.
It’s always a peaceful crowd as well, he said.
“For 22 years, we’ve never had an argument or a fight,” he said. “The kids play, and parents and grandparents just sit back and listen to the music.
“It’s a beautiful thing,” he continued. “We’re trying to get the kids down here away from all that hard rap, cop-killing bang-bang stuff. Bring the kids, and enjoy the music.”
Jazz in the Park Youngstown Inc. is now a nonprofit organization, though the city helps to support it.
“[Thank you] to the city council and the parks department,” Green said, explaining that the concerts began as a city program.
“They hired my sister-in-law to do arts and crafts [for kids],” he said. But on the last day of what was supposed to be a one-time event, they brought in jazz musicians to do a jam session.
“The kids accepted it so well it became Jazz in the Park,” Robinson said.
Robinson and Green said the Trumbull County Arts Guild is now a nonprofit partner, and Jazz in the Park also accepts tax-deductible donations at the following address: Jazz in the Park Youngstown/Fact, P.O. Box 2929, Youngstown, OH 44511.
As the Dave Thomas Orchestra of Cleveland started off the last concert of the year, best friends Nate Rivers of Youngstown and Alfred Dial, visiting from Alabama, tailgated and greeted friends who walked past their truck.
Rivers has been coming to the concerts for the last four or five years, he said.
“Whenever it ain’t raining,” he said, adding that it’s something fun to do in Youngstown.
At a nearby picnic table, Mickey Hagwood; her husband, Robert Gilmore; her son Kendrick Hagwood and his girlfriend, Yvette Nelson, had finished lunch and were settling in to listen to the music.
All of them are jazz fans, and it was a great way for them to spend part of their Labor Day weekend while Kendrick Hagwood and Nelson were visiting from Newport News, Va.
“We love it!” said Mickey.