Backyard Hero: Kent Denver School’s Stephen Holley
by Tim Wenger
Stephen Holley, Director of the Commercial Music Program at Kent Denver School, is used to travel. He spent years on tour as a gigging musician, and now that he has settled into the domesticated marriage-mortgage-kids lifestyle, he feeds his travel bug by leading the high school jazz band (and other school-related bands) to out of town performances, sometimes as far as the Montreaux Jazz Festival in Switzerland and soul festivals in Porretta, Italy.
A southern boy, Holley was born in Little Rock and went to school in Memphis. After finishing school, he played music full time for about eight years and then spent a couple years on the road with a group from Nashville. He also taught music at the University of Memphis for a while. After touring through Denver multiple times, Holley decided he wanted a change of scenery and made the Mile High City his home. Now, he passes his experience on to younger generations at Kent Denver School, preparing them for performances and taking them on the road to gig in front of audiences around the world.
“The idea is giving these kids once in a lifetime experiences,” says Holley. “It’s getting to the point now where we’re doing it more often than not. We’re giving these kids these experiences so it’s not just me talking to them.” Funding for the trips comes through the parents of the children, and the fact that the kids are out gigging around town throughout the year, with a good cut of the proceeds from the shows going to offset the travel costs. “We have a fairly substantial financial budget at Kent, and the other thing we do which makes us different from a lot of high school programs is that we go out and play a lot. These kids are doing anywhere from 40 to 50 gigs a year.” The shows range from the CHUN Capitol Hill People’s Fair to slots at Dazzle and other clubs around the city. The kids not only raise funds for their trips, but are gaining real-life experience at professional gigging. “A lot of it is teaching these life skills like responsibility, teamwork, professionalism and using music to teach them.”
This last year, the jazz band at Kent had the opportunity to perform at the Montreaux Jazz Festival and then headed down to Poretta, Italy for an additional five gigs. “We did two shows at Montreaux,” Holley says. “From there we went down to Poretta. We did five dates there, multiple stages throughout this little town of 5,000 right on the northern border of Tuscany. It was great because it’s a soul festival dedicated to Memphis music and the memory of Otis Redding and Rufus Thomas.” The festival has been going on for 27 years, pretty impressive considering it is honoring a style from across the world.
“This is the first year of international trips,” Holley says. “Back in March, I also took the kids from our jazz group and our Afro-Cuban salsa group to Havana, Cuba for a week. We went to the four major music conservatories and met those kids. The kids got to hang out and talk.” Quite an experience for a group of high school kids from Denver, considering how hard it can be to enter Cuba from the United States. “It was funny because the Cuban kids all wanted to work on their English and my kids all wanted to work on their Spanish. They got to play and jam with each other.”
During the gigs down in Cuba, the groups got to see some of the original members of the Buena Vista Social Club. “Oddly enough, we didn’t know they were going to be there,” says Holley. “We thought it was going to be this Cuban boy band, and all of a sudden I noticed a couple of the guys getting up on stage. They did a four or five tune set and that was it.”
While the group is out traveling, they use their spare time doing the tourist-y things. “When we had a day off in Italy, we went and spent a couple days in Venice,” says Holley. “When we’re in New Orleans, we’ll go down to the quarter, but the main drive of the trip is music.” On nights off, Holley take the kids to watch professional gigs, exposing them to other music and the clubs that host it. “I want them to have experiences that they otherwise might not have had.”
Through all of this, the overall mission remains to prepare the kids for life’s mis-happenings. “The main thing is using my real world experiences to bring to these kids,” says Holley. “So I can say, fifteen years ago, this happened. Last night, this happened, and this is how we got out of it. We talk a lot about making something musical out of your mistakes, because you’re always going to mess up on stage, mess up in the studio, so how do you make something cool out of that. And once again, dealing with life, when life feeds you something you don’t expect, you don’t just shut down. You have to deal with it one way or another.”
Read stories from the kids below:
My favorite memory was standing in the streets of porretta at night after we had watched the muscle shoals band and every band member was accapella singing their part to love you save and we made a little accapella band. – Cassie, 16, vocalist
My most memorable moment of the trip was the gig we played in a small mountain town named Grizzana Morandi. The venue had the most amazing view and served us amazing food as well. It felt like the entire town turned out to watch us play, and while they did not speak the same language, they still really seemed to enjoy our performance. Perhaps the most interesting part of that gig was that we had the cops called on us because we played for too long and broke curfew. The mayor told them to ignore curfew that night because they were enjoying our performance so much. I was amazed we were received so well, and would love to go back and experience it again. – Ricky, 17, tenor sax
For me, seeing all these Italian kids who were our age and didn’t speak English come up to us and want to get our autographs or pictures with us, that was special. Just feeling like we were respected in a place where nobody really thought much of America was a good thing. – Geoffrey, 16, bass
My favorite part of the Europe trip was when we got to sing on stage with Vaneese Thomas (daughter of Rufus Thomas). It was such a great experience, getting to meet her and talk with her, the rehearsals leading up to performance and, finally, the performance! It was all quite amazing and really fun! – Spencer, 16, alto sax
One of the coolest parts of the trip was being able to speak French on a stage in Switzerland to almost 2000 people and talk to them about the band in French and encourage them to come dance. The audience was immediately intrigued when they found out this American singer could speak their language and that made them more willing to dance! Of course in Italy, I had to learn how to say ‘come dance with us,’ which is ‘venito a balare con noy,’ if you were curious. – Perrin, 17, vocalist
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