A Special Performance in Olympia

Having been in band at Waitsburg’s Preston Hall for two years, my son Niko knows what it takes to get ready for performances.

But his most recent “gig” was a bit different.

Niko, who plays guitar in jazz band at Bainbridge High School, along with three dozen of his fellow band members, received a surprise last-minute invita- tion to a special event last week.

How last-minute? Let’s just say they had a mere five days to practice four pieces, three of which were original arrangements of songs they hadn’t played before.

Courtesy of their music teacher, Chris Thomas, who put their trip to Olympia in motion, they got to play at the inauguration of Gov. Jay Inslee. To the ears of this jazz fan and proud father, they sounded great. I’ll have you know that I wasn’t the only one who thought so.

“They were wonderful,” said Ralph Munro, a Bainbridge Island native who retired some years ago as one of the longest-serving secretaries of state.

Smooth rhythms and brassy tones soon resounded in every marble corner of the giant Capitol Rotunda after Inslee, a fellow islander, was sworn in as Washington’s 23rd governor an hour and a half before noon.

Under Thomas’ direction, the 33 students in cool black tops and yellow ties performed the state folk song “Roll On Columbia, Roll On,” a soothing rendition of John Lennon’s “Imagine,” the mandatory and always feisty “Louie Louie” and Sammy Nestico’s swing classic “Basie Straight Ahead.”

“They weren’t planning on anyone performing (at the morning ceremony),” said Thomas, who got the idea for the musical addition to the short ceremony when he ran into Inslee on the ferry from Seattle after the November election.

“At that point it was just a pipe dream,” he said about the day he fired off a long- shot email to the office of the governor-elect.

To his shock and delight, Thomas got a thumbs up from Inslee’s staff barely two weeks before the inaugural and the show was on.

“It was exciting and stressful because there were lots of logistics,” the thin be- spectacled band teacher said.

Several serious rehearsals and a UHaul for the instruments later, Niko and his jazz band filed into the stately capitol building amongst lawmakers, well-wishers and media following a pre- dawn bus trip south.

As they set up on the steps above the state seal and the podium where Inslee would later raise his right hand, they quickly learned the value of volume controls. They were used to turning them way up in the band room but had to turn them way down in the intensely acoustic reaches of the rotunda’s lofty dome, Niko said. “It was dif- ferent.”

Though it was his first time in Olympia and his first time attending such as stately affair as a governor’s oath of office, Niko said he was prepared as a performer thanks to what he picked up from Waitsburg music teachers Rebecca Wilson (6th grade) and Brad Green (7th grade).

“That’s where I learned how to read sheet music and play lots of cool songs,” he said. Because of his band concerts in Waitsburg and the peppy instrumental interludes during Kison Court basketball games, he was well familiar with the likes of “Louie Louie.”

Niko recalls how Green let him and his Preston Hall friends try out different instruments in band, while both music teachers taught them how to set up for performances. His Waitsburg middle school years in band (2009 – 2011) inspired him to audition for jazz band at Bainbridge High as a fresh- man, he said.

While their notes lingered in the halls outside the legislative chambers, the inaugural musicians last Wednesday ate lunch and took a tour of the capitol building with its bronze bust of George Washington (his nose rubbed to a shine for good luck), its 10,000-pound chandelier and Tiffany fire pots.

In the words of a 15-year- old, one historic field trip wiser and still bright-eyed from the camera lights, “it was cool.”