S.F. Bethany Secures Trumpeter
From Two Renowned Jazz Bands

By Bruce Pettit

San Francisco -- December 7, 2006

Dave Scott, director of music at Bethany United Methodist Church, plays trumpet with two nationally-renowned jazz bands – the Boz Scaggs Band and the Marcus Shelby Jazz Orchestra.

After Bethany had gone through a number of substitute musicians for 12 months, Scott came aboard in August. He hopes to invigorate faith in an urban area through music that people can both tap their toes to, but that also blends classical and jazz.

For Sunday, December 3, Scott is brought to the church and its Noe Valley neighborhood a quintet of the Marcus Shelby orchestra, including Shelby. It was billed as Christmas songs in a jazz style, with Scott on trumpet. The Rev. Lauren Chaffee, Bethany’s pastor, offered a reading of a "Charlie Brown Christmas' between numbers. Kids were invited to come up close to the instruments – bass, trumpet, drums, piano, and saxophone – and ask questions. And the quintet accepted challenges to improvise right on the spot, as the kids called out the names of their holiday favorites, including "Frosty the Snowman" and "Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer."

Scott, 42, has played for Boz Scaggs for three years. As he explains it, “Boz needed a trumpet player who would have ideas about what to play even when he wasn’t sure himself [Scaggs plays guitar and sings] what the trumpet player should be playing. Also, he needed someone who doubled as a keyboardist.”

He came to Bethany from Glide Memorial United Methodist Church after six years with its praise band. There he found the legendary Rev. Cecil Williams to be similar to a jazz musician. Both on a social scale and in sermons, Scott said, Williams “could sense what was needed, in any given moment – improvising and creating something special and meaningful in places where there was nothing before.”

Still, of the mega-church in San Francisco’s Tenderloin, Scott said: “Glide isn’t for someone who wants more of a feeling of intimacy” in worship. At Bethany “I want to find music that reflects an intelligent faith. I want music to be fresh, varied, vibrant, and fun. I especially like jazz- and blues-influenced gospel-sounding chords.” He wants to start a Bethany youth band for kids 8 to 18.

Growing up in Ann Arbor, Michigan, Scott got hooked on jazz chords in the second grade after an assignment from his piano teacher. In the third grade he preferred baseball and wanted to quit piano, but his mother told him that he, not she, would have to tell the piano teacher. “I kept putting it off. A year later I was over the hump and didn’t want to quit anymore.” He took nine more years of piano and started trumpet in fifth grade. He discovered the heartache of Chopin, ambiguous harmonies in DeBussy, and vibrant jazzyness in Gershwin.

“When I was 16, I went to the National Music Camp at Interlochen, Michigan, and discovered a whole bunch of other music- and art-loving kids, just like me. There I was fully accepted and not a band geek.”

The Shelby orchestra, whose style derives directly from Duke Ellington, has recently seen its latest CD, Port Chicago, rise on the national Billboard chart. Its next CD will be dedicated to Harriet Tubman, the slave who escaped in 1849 on the Underground Railroad and went back to lead others to freedom. Scott, who heads a separate Dave Scott Quartet, has recently released a CD of his own songs – Why Must It Be? about current world conditions.

Scott teaches at the Community Music Center in San Francisco and at the Jazz School in Berkeley .
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Pettit is a member of SF Bethany UMC.