Caryn

Caryn is our vocalist and band organizer/hassler. She has a long history music, from singing along to Disney movies as a toddler and making home videos of 90s girl pop covers, to years in school and extracurricular choirs. She fell in love with jazz in high school and, while she took a bit of a music hiatus in college, the passion for jazz and performing has never left. She used to have to get her jazz fix singing along to YouTube karaoke alone, in her basement, but she’s finally found a cohort of music nerds that were foolish enough to join her in her quest for a perfect jazz combo. 

Tim

Tim took string bass lessons when he was in grade school and started playing electric bass for his high school jazz choir.  At Gonzaga U, he played in the jazz band and was a member of the faculty jazz quartet. In grad school, he played in an instrumental jazz combo as well as a garage rock band.  Since then, he’s mostly played music casually with friends and family so he’s excited to play with this group.

Ian

Ian began playing percussion in the 7th grade and instantly fell in love with music. He was first introduced to jazz music in the high school jazz band, where he learned to enjoy the freedom it allowed. At BYU, he studied percussion under Dr. Ronald Brough and had the privilege of performing with many talented musicians. Since graduating, Ian has spent most of his time teaching music and has rarely had time to perform. He’s excited for this new opportunity to have fun playing music with some great people.

Adam

Adam got to borrow his grandparents’ piano when he was 12, and soon after he learned how to read chords and that he hated Bach and that level of precision. This all led to taking jazz piano his first year in college, where he fell in love with jumbles of notes labeled “C7 #5 #9,” blues scales, and permission to throw in an extra note or leave something out. He spent hours in a dark dormitory lounge playing an out-of-tune grand piano, and ever since he’s been making things up.  Now he’s excited to break out a little and play along with this talented ensemble.

Kevin

When he was 14, Kevin stole his dad’s ‘69 Fender Mustang (which no longer worked) and tried to play some Jimi Hendrix without knowing what chords were. Needless to say, he was less than successful. His unfounded confidence led him down to the basement where he taught himself to play punk and metal music while his parents told him to turn down that god awful noise. Luckily, that noise was loud enough he didn’t hear them. Many years later, he fixed that old guitar and attempted some Jimi again with mixed results. For some reason, he thinks he’s okay at this guitar thing now, although objective evidence points to the contrary. One day he hopes to be a real musician.

This all started when Caryn started talking to Adam, and there happened to be a piano there, and then we simultaneously realized that Caryn just wanted to sing, and Adam just wanted to play, and then they pulled up a couple of things that they knew and then, right then and there, there was music, and that was fun. And then Tim was there, and we all simultaneously thought that it would be great if the next time we did this he had his bass and could play along. And then, pretty much at the same time, we realized we should talk to Ian about percussion and Kevin about guitar, and how fun would that be?

And sure enough, it’s really, really fun. We just all had to be in the right place at the right time and have Caryn say, “We should do this,” and so here we are.