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Peter Jennings always said, “Jazz musicians are the most generous people in the world.”
In 1996, a talented troupe proved him correct—among them pianist Lafayette Harris Jr., drummer Max Roach, trumpeter Wynton Marsalis, saxophonist Illinois Jacquet, and bassist Percy Heath. The group played a concert that would come to be known as “Jazz for Jennings”—first and foremost, a fundraiser for the Bridgehampton Child Care and Recreational Center, where Mr. Jennings served as a board member until his death in 2005.
Now, it is also a remembrance.
After a nearly decade-long hiatus, the benefit concert is making a comeback on Sunday at the Watermill Center, with many of the veteran musicians who are still alive in attendance and on stage.
“It can’t be the same event without Peter,” explained his widow, Kayce Freed Jennings. “All 13 musicians are coming back—if they can come back, they are. I went to see Eric Reed play, and afterward at the bar I told him about it. He said, ‘What’s the date?’ I told him, and he took out his phone and looked at his calendar. He said, ‘I am playing the 27th. But I can make the 28th. Done.’”
The inaugural event came together almost two decades ago during a conversation between Mr. Jennings and his friend, Mr. Roach. The late ABC News anchor undoubtedly loved much about Bridgehampton, where he built a home from wood that his brother-in-law, Ian Johns, trucked down from their native Canada. He adored the winding roads, the beaches, the late afternoon light, the quaint villages and hamlets—and, most of all, the people within them.
“The Peter I fell in love with loved his community and always sought out ways to use his position to help it,” Ms. Jennings said. “He genuinely cared about his neighbors and about where he lived ... He saw that the Bridgehampton Center was a small but important organization that needed funding badly. He wanted to shine a spotlight on it.”
The two men came up with an idea. The Jennings home would be the venue. The newsman would invite his colleagues. Mr. Roach would call his friends to perform.
And, just like that, a fundraiser was born.
The organizers thought it would be a one-off for their 300 closest friends, Ms. Jennings said, with the ABC newsroom staff setting tables, friends donating wine, and young musical lions paired against legends.
They were wrong, she said. It was perfect.
“For eight years, they stayed at friends’ houses. They believed that if Peter was asking them to do something, it was something important, and they came,” Ms. Jennings said. “They knew the Bridgehampton Center mattered to Peter, and they didn’t hesitate.”
Mr. Harris, who performed during the first-ever concert, said it was “quite a thrill” to even be asked. “Here were guys at the top of their games, coming together to inspire,” he said, referring specifically to Mr. Jennings and Mr. Roach. “It was a little hectic that first year. We all kind of just arrived in the backyard and put up a tent. Peter and Kayce were so warm and generous. They just opened their whole home and were, like, ‘Use the master bedroom, bathroom, anything you need.’”
Somehow, for eight concerts between 1996 to 2004, they pulled it off every time, raising nearly $1 million total. But when Mr. Jennings died at age 67 from lung cancer, the benefit stopped. It just didn’t feel the same, Ms. Jennings said.
Life eventually went on, for both Ms. Jennings and the Bridgehampton Child Care and Recreational Center. When she got word that the center, which predominantly serves the African-American and Latino communities on the East End, was severely struggling financially, she decided it was time to bring the fundraiser back.
“I’m looking forward to playing with Eric Reed,” Mr. Harris said of the upcoming concert. “He’s someone I came up with through the ranks.”
Joining them are bassists Christian McBride and Cameron Brown, vocalist Claudia Acuña, saxophonist Mark Gross, guitarist Russell Malone, Delfeayo Marsalis on trombone, Diane Monroe on violin, and Dan Rose on guitar. Trumpeter Jon Faddis and drummer Lewis Nash, who played a memorial service for Mr. Jennings at Carnegie Hall shortly after his death in 2005, will also perform.
“These musicians don’t often play together. Or maybe they never have played together,” Ms. Jennings said. “But they get such joy out of playing together. You can see them on stage watching what the others will do. There is a lot of improv in jazz—that’s the beauty of it—but it is really an incredibly technical genre to play. The more time I spend listening to jazz, the more I appreciate how well trained the musicians are, the complexity of it. This takes a deep, deep musical knowledge.”
Perhaps Mr. Jennings’s love of jazz was rooted in the story that comes out of style, being a storyteller himself. Perhaps he loved to travel along avenues unexpected, especially when the jazz greats riff off one another. But one fact is certain: Mr. Jennings appreciated jazz musicians, and they appreciated him, his widow said.
“He would be very careful that [the concert] was not seen to honor him, but rather that it would honor and renew his commitment to the Bridgehampton Center and his community. It would please him to know we were using him to refocus attention on the center. He would be grateful and humbled,” Ms. Jennings said. “We can’t recreate what was. Peter won’t be there. We just want to recapture the spirit of what Peter created.”
“Jazz for Jennings,” a concert and brunch to benefit the Bridgehampton Child Care and Recreational Center, will be held on Saturday, June 28, from 12:30 to 4 p.m. at the Watermill Center. Tickets are $500 and will not be available at the door. For more information, call (631) 537-3188, or visit linda@hamptons.com.
on Jun 23, 2015