A local big band...big on talent, too

This place is show biz. Everyone wants to entertain you.  When an entertainment dollar flutters loose in these parts, a million hands start grabbing at it.  Getting someone to sit down to watch your show is the number-one goal. There are entertainment giants who spend millions to achieve it.
 Then there is a smoother9, mellower end of the entertainment scale. A place where a group of people just get together to make music, the kind they love. And if you love it too, so much the better.
         A great example of the latter resides right here in Altamonte Springs, Florida -The Altamonte Jazz Ensemble. This group has been playing together for 22 years. The city of Altamonte Springs supplies a friendly, supportive home. A guy named Mike Arena supplies the drive.
         Arena is the band's director, which also makes him the group's chief worrywart. He handles all of the jobs that fall under the classification of a "big headache", as he puts it. 
         Arena relocated to Florida and Seminole County in 1978. While hooked on music, he made a career in the electronics business instead. It promised a steady paycheck and a financially secure future.
          But retirement has cut him loose. "Now I am doing what I would have liked to have done 40 years ago," Arena said.
          As a result, we are treated to three first-class, big band concerts a year. Arena began to cobble together a rehearsal band as soon as he hit town. The band's first home was the Why Not Lounge in the Holiday Inn on Wymore Road, in Altamonte Springs near Interstate 4. Altamonte Springs City Commissioner Eddie Rose, then recreation director, heard the band and gave them a place to practice at the Eastmonte Civic Center. The band grew permanent roots in Altamonte Springs.

      This is no small operation. The band, its instrumentation modeled after the Stan Kenton Orchestra, has 20 pieces - five trumpets, five trombones, five saxophones and a rhythm section.
          Arena worries about keeping them at full speed, filling vacancies, conducting the weekly Sunday-night rehearsals and making sure everyone makes it to a concert. He also provides the arrangements and the discipline.
         The musicians come from all backgrounds, some like Arena's. Others are professional musicians, retired musicians and college students. The current band ranges from Max Coberly, a baritone sax player in his late 70's to Jason Oliver, a young UCF student on bass trombone.
        Originally the band held its performances at the Eastmonte Civic Center. Crowds outgrew that facility, though, and now the band hosts concerts at Lake Brantley High School in Altamonte Springs.
       The concerts come in the spring, summer and fall. An added dimension is the presence of Jack Simpson, longtime host of WUCF's popular Jazz on the Beach show on Saturdays. Simpson serves as emcee for the concerts.
         While the jazz ensemble may be a collection of weekend warriors, Arena vows, "We work toward a degree of perfection." Music is not something Arena and the members of the Altamonte Jazz Ensemble take lightly. They are not ukulele thumpers. "Just like classical music has endured through the ages," Arena said, "I would like the big bands to also endure. "It is the community bands that keep it going"

D-4 The Orlando Sentinel Tuesday, May 2, 2000