The Journal

Issue date: 9/28/06 Section: LifeStyle

Media Credit: Audrey Burke Joe Boccardi's Ristorante, a festival sponsor, attracted many young attendees of the Jazz Festival Sept. 23 with their bubble machine next to the booth. Boccardi's was one of several sponsors that set up booths to create a food court on Gore and Allen Avenues.

The saxophone, guitar, trumpet, keyboard and drums of Omerta can typically be found every weekend at the Delmar Lounge.

On Sept. 23, however, the jazz band, which consists of several Webster students, could be found tucked away in a small corner outside Natural Fact Foods in Old Webster between a steel walkway and a parking lot ­- a makeshift third stage of the sixth annual Old Webster Jazz Festival.

"We're usually a well-rehearsed band," said Nick Savage, a junior jazz performance major. "We're usually a
bit tighter."

Savage, who played the drums, added the band did not play for compensation at Natural Fact Deli at 20 Allen Ave.

The band played at the request of senior Drew Wilson, a media communications major, who works at the deli. Wilson said he knew it would be
an opportunity for the band to get their music out to a large audience.

"Some of my friends play in the band, most of them either went to or still go to Webster,
so I thought it would be a good location for them to play," Wilson said.

The band did indeed have an audience, with many festival-goers stopping to watch Omerta play on their way to and from the festival's two venues.

The band was just one of the many side attractions at the Old Webster Jazz Festival, which also included food court booths set up by sponsors, a balloon artist and a juggler on stilts. The free-admission street festival boasted a main attraction of an all-local lineup on two different stages - the larger on Gore Avenue and the smaller on Allen Avenue. St. Louis native and jazz guitarist Billy Peek headlined the event.

Art Holliday, morning anchor for television station KSDK Channel 5 and a Webster Groves resident, had a booth on Lockwood Avenue in front of Webster Records to promote his ongoing documentary on the late jazz pianist Johnnie Johnson, to whom this year's festival is dedicated.

Continued...

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