All That Jazz By Steve York

Shane Chalke is a musician’s musician, as evidenced by both his seasonedskill on the trumpet and his nearly non-stop circuit of performances all around the High Country, his home state of Florida and beyond. Whether playing with his BE Jazz group when in Banner Elk, with his original Shane Chalke Jazz Trio back in Florida, or sitting in with Boone’s Swing Set orchestra, Shane IS “the music man.” But his evolution towards music man status took a sharp and unlikely detour for many years. Typically, most full-time professional musicians start young and follow some form of music path for the rest of their life. And that’s the path Shane’s life appeared to follow when he was a boy. After all, he got his first trumpet at age nine, learned to play both alto sax and flute, and even developed some skill on piano. His passion for music was well nurtured and seemed to mark his destiny. “In high school, I’d fall asleep every night listening to a Miles Davis album called ‘Basic Miles’. I probably listened to that album 1,000 times. I also loved Lee Morgan and Blue Mitchell,” Shane recalls. Throughout college, Shane played jazz gigs professionally and was a trumpeter with a Tower Of Power-type funk band at various clubs during the summer and New England ski resorts in the winter. So, anyone back then would have reasonably assumed that Shane would continue developing his music career until he either hit the big time or ended up playing weddings and minor venues for a living. But another destiny called, and Shane left music behind to immerse himself in the business world. “I was a math major and music minor in college, then became an actuary. For a while I headed up research for Transamerica before leaving that job at age 25 to form my own company. Ultimately, I ended up founding several more companies in the field of financial technology,” Shane recounts. So, once again, the logical assumption would have been that the world of business and finance had captured Shane’s life and passion from there forward, and that music would have been mostly a happy memory or, at most, an occasional weekend indulgence when dusting off the trumpet and blowing out a few tunes in the garage for an audience of one. Ah, but have we learned nothing from this tale so far? Skipping over the details, let’s just say that one morning in 1996 Shane woke up, decided to leave his career of high finance behind, pulled that dusty trumpet out of the garage, and rekindled his old flame…jazz. Playing jazz, hitting the jazz clubs, performing at jazz festivals, forming his own jazz trio, playing with other jazz bands, playing all kinds of jazz, producing his own jazz CDs to sell online, living jazz and lovin’ it. Okay, so we left out all the practical details about how he made the transition from the financial industry back to professional jazz musician. But isn’t it much more romantic and dramatic—more fitting for the world of jazz—to skip all that and just say, “His trumpet called,  and he said yes”?

Shane and his wife, Monique, spend summers in Banner Elk, from where he and his group play non-stop every hot spot in the High Country. In the winter, the Chalkes have their home in Sarasota, Florida where, according to Shane, there’s a big vibrant jazz community. “By far the hippest jazz club in Sarasota is Burns Court Café, where I play every Wednesday night during the season. I do a handful of concerts each winter in 200-300 seat venues, but nothing larger. Jazz works better in small places. Around here, my regular venues are The Chef ’s Table in Banner Elk, Chetola in Blowing Rock, and The Alpen Inn on top of Beech Mountain. The most interesting gig I’ve done with my NC boys was last October when I took them down to Sarasota to play four shows at the famous Asolo Theatre—that was a great experience,” Shane recalls. You can catch up with this true music man’s blurring performance schedule at www.be-jazz.com.