THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, June 28, 1996 TAG: 9606280464
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: GUY FRIDDELL
LENGTH: 54 lines
``I was born in the wrong generation,'' jazz cat Trish Fritz said Thursday at her home in Hampton.
``No, no! Don't say that!'' I begged her.
She came along at the right time. The swing era swung her cradle. How refreshing for me, loving big bands from my youth, to find a young musician who had enjoyed them as a tot and plays them with zest in her prime.
She will be the soloist as the Tidewater Winds band begins its free concerts Sunday at 7:30 p.m. and continues each Sunday in July at the Wells Theater in Norfolk.
Directed by Sidney Berg, it will also play in Virginia Beach, Chesapeake and Portsmouth.
Clarinetist Fritz, former concert master for the Band of the United States Air Forces in Europe, was a featured soloist as it toured Europe and the Middle East.
For Sunday, her solo will be Artie Shaw's ``Concerto.'' The band also will play ``Let's Dance,'' Benny Goodman's theme. Others will be George Gershwin's ``American in Paris,'' John Williams' ``Liberty Fanfare,'' medleys by George M. Cohan and Richard Rodgers, Bernstein's ``Candide Overture,'' Morton Gould's ``American Salute'' and marches of John Philip Sousa.
Fritz began piano at age 5 in her musical family in Bloomington, Ind. At 10, she took up the clarinet.
``My father had a good friend, a clarinet player, and I sort of had a crush on him. If he played the clarinet, that was good enough for me.''
She returned to Indiana last week to appear with her idol, John Koehler, who led the Evansville Symphonic Band. The whole family - grandmother, various aunts and uncles and cousins - turned out for the concert.
``It was,'' she said, ``great fun for all of us.''
Her tastes ``are very much in the swing era of the early 1930s to the mid-1940s. My father had lots of recordings of Glen Miller, Stan Kenton, Tommy Dorsey, Count Basie, Duke Ellington.''
She teaches clarinet and saxophone at the Academy of Music in Norfolk on Colonial Avenue. Her husband, John, plays oboe and saxophone with the band at Langley Air Force Base, and, after the season's first week, he will join Tidewater Winds for the summer.
The two have organized the Jazz Cats as a trio and sextet, playing ``strictly swing.''
In Chesapeake, the Winds will play each Monday in July at Great Bridge High School and at Western Branch Middle School on Fridays: July 5, 12 and 26. Concerts on Fridays July 19 and Aug. 2 will be in Willett Hall in Portsmouth.
In Virginia Beach, the band will be at Kempsville High School each Tuesday in July. At the 24th Street Park at the Oceanfront, it will play the first four Wednesdays in July. On the fifth Wednesday, it will be at Beth Sholom nursing home. ILLUSTRATION: Photo
Trish Fritz by CNB