Jet Trommer, freshman in Engineering, was heading home a little before 9 p.m. on Oct. 1 when he came across an open jam session hosted by the RSO band Kick Brass.
He followed the sounds of jazz music down to the Krannert Center for the Performing Arts, where he discovered the event and took a seat.
Seeing the acoustic guitar Trommer was carrying from a prior RSO meeting, Jack Tolentino, Kick Brass president and junior in AHS, invited him to join the group of musical improvisers already gathered.
“I figured that once Jack asked me to come down, it was like, ‘Okay, well, I have two choices,’” Trommer said. “Make the move or forever regret not doing it.”
He ended up joining the players, and they took turns contributing ideas and performing solos for the rest of the event.
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This kind of moment was exactly what Tolentino intended when he and the group decided to host the jam session.
“I organized it with the intention of making it a place for the community to just come together, kind of bond over music,” Tolentino said.
Kick Brass calls itself an “Official Street Performing Brass Band” on its public platforms. The group currently has six members: Tolentino on baritone saxophone, senior in Engineering, Justin Martin on trumpet, senior in LAS, Cy Hallera-Cavanez on drums, junior in Media, Ryan Hanson on trombone, sophomore in FAA, Wade Wilson on tenor saxophone and freshman in LAS, Lukas Hoerl on bass clarinet. Each member holds an administrative position in addition to their musical role.
Tolentino founded the band in 2023 with the intention of carrying on a passion for music into college.
“A lot of the musicians that I played with in high school, they’d be high-level musicians, they’d get to college and they’d just stop playing their instruments,” Tolentino said.
Tolentino said he set out to create a space for these musicians to continue playing without the level of commitment required by the curricular bands and with more freedom.
Founding member Hallera-Cavanez says that the group has accomplished this goal. He spoke of spending time with other local musicians and performing at respected venues.
“If I didn’t have Kick Brass, I think my years here would be a lot more boring, for sure,” Hallera-Cavanez said.
The band’s biweekly rehearsals follow this same ethos.
“We’re just like a big friend group, basically,” Martin said. “We just … hang out. It’s not like a normal band rehearsal. You just kind of say, ‘All right, let’s just play this a couple of times, see if we can get better at it.’ And for the most part, we’re just focusing on having fun.”
The band also strives to put on street performances at least once a week and performs at bars and house shows whenever possible.
Oct. 1 was the band’s first ever jam session that was open to musicians outside the band, but the members agree that they want to further enhance their improvisation skills as a group.
“I think a lot of us were all trying to work on being better at improvising and kind of being more coherent while being spontaneous,” Hallera-Cavanez said.
The majority of members are upperclassmen. The jam session was also an opportunity to find new members of the community who would be interested in carrying on the Kick Brass project of fostering a continued love of music.
“Hopefully, that’ll spark some more interest in people joining the band and increase longevity,” Tolentino said.
The outdoor amphitheater was easily accessible to the public from the street, which allowed audience members to trickle in and out to listen to the music over the course of the two-hour performance, with about 15 people staying at a time.
In total, three new musicians came to improvise with the band members, each playing a different instrument than the members of the band.
Trommer, for one, felt inspired by the spirit of possibility at the event.
“While this is the first time I ever walked out late at night and found something I took part in, it probably won’t be the last,” Trommer said. “I feel like there’s almost always something going on.”
