After more than 30 years as a music educator, Stanley Coleman said farewell at the end of the 2018 school year. He taught in the Wellston, Jennings and St. Louis Public Schools – and spent twenty years at University City, where he was instrumental in forming the jazz program at Brittany Woods Middle School.
As an encore, Coleman decided to go out with a bang by way of his Jam and Preserves featuring Alexis Lombre at 2 p.m. on Sunday, June 10 at the Sheldon Concert Hall. He broke down how his students inspired the clever title of his show.
“The deal is, I taught my kids songs that they could go to anybody’s jam session and play,” Coleman said. “The preserve part is to preserve the legacy of playing live jazz music. The art of black musicians playing what is inherently theirs is dying, and I want to preserve it.”
Lombre, an internationally renowned Chicago-based pianist Coleman calls “the truth,” will headline the show that also features 2018 “American Idol” top 50 finalist Christina Jones. Several former students and young musicians Coleman has mentored throughout the years will come from all over to join in the jam.
“It’s going to be fun. I’m going to give them the music, I’ll count it off and we’ll just go – that’s how it’s going to be,” Coleman said. “To be honest, I don’t know what to expect – which is a beautiful thing.”
He’s introduced countless young people to the art of musicianship. His passion for it stems back to his own childhood.
“I went to Wentzville, Missouri – to a country club across from Chuck Berry’s farm and say Benny Sharp and the Sharpies when I was 10 years old,” Coleman said. “I heard this live sound. I ran to the edge of the stage. My mom had to pull me from the front. I told her, ‘This is what I want to do,’ and she went out and got me a saxophone.”
He learned from the best musicians St. Louis had to offer – like Oliver Sain and Willie Akins. Late trumpeter Floyd LeFlore was his first jazz teacher. He and young fellow musicians formed Youngblood Inc., which later became Constellation. The band was quite popular on the black music circuit in the region and beyond. He also made a name for himself as a saxophonist aside from the group. He played on Broadway. He was the go-to saxophonist for musicals produced by the Black Rep for several years.
As he gigged, Coleman continued with his education.
He was fresh out of Webster when he returned to his alma mater Halter High School in the Wellston School District. A former teacher told him that if he went back to get his master’s degree, there would be a job waiting for him – so that’s what he did. At 23 years old, Coleman took his graduate degree and got to work shaping the minds of young people by helping develop their sound.
“This is what I was supposed to have done,” Coleman said of his career in music education. “Not only has it fed me emotionally and spiritually, but I also had an opportunity to feed my students’ lives.”
Coleman said that music is crucial to a well-rounded education because it is an important asset to critical thinking and multitasking.
“You have to really listen,” Coleman said. “It makes you do eight or nine things at one time, when most people can’t walk and chew gum.”
He is proud of the music he helped his students discover. But he is even more proud of the people he has watched them become.
“Everybody is not a musician – I have students who have gone on to become officers in the Navy, to work at Anheuser-Busch and at Stanford working on their MBA,” Coleman said. “They don’t have to be a musician for me to be happy – just productive citizens and good people.”
Coleman says his next chapter includes getting back into the groove of being a full-time musician, which will kick off with Jam and Preserves next Sunday at The Sheldon.
“I just want to say goodbye – and hello again,” Coleman said.
Stan Coleman’s Jam and Preserves featuring Alexis Lombre will take place at 2 p.m. on Sunday, June 10 at The Sheldon Concert Hall, 3648 Washington.
